This dish is amazingly simple and memorably tasty. It's from one of my favorite little cookbooks, Cook This, Not That: Easy and Awesome 350-calorie Meals by David Zinczenko & Matt Goulding.
It's not one of the cheapest meals in the book. I paid $20 for about 10oz. of Chilean Sea Bass, which gave me 4 oz. and Allen 6 oz. Plenty for both of us, since we had a salad with it. You can save money by using halibut or any white fish, even tilapia or catfish, the authors suggest.
TIPS: use skinny asparagus - it's more tender; to peel ginger root before grating, use the back of a spoon and scrape it off rather than use a sharp knife; after grating the ginger, it tends to stick to the grater - to release, hold the grater over the fish and bang the grater against something solid like the side of a pan or dull side of a large chef's knife, and it will spatter haphazardly over the fish, which is what you want.
Rather than give the recipe for 4 people, and then having to halve it or or even quarter it for one person, I'll present the recipe per packet.
250 calories, 4.5 g fat, 540 mg sodium
$5.85 per serving for sea bass (Chilean is more expensive than this), or less for other white fish
Somewhat Interesting Family Factoid:
Every time someone mentions Chilean Sea Bass, my better half, Allen, blurts out PATAGONIAN TOOTHFISH!
That's because he read Four Fishes: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg. It explains that for marketing purposes, someone decided to rename the Patagonian Toothfish to Chilean Seabass.
Sea Bass Packet
Compliments of JennaDish
MAKES 1 PACKET
6 oz. Sea Bass fillet (or halibut or other white fish)
2-8 spears of asparagus, preferably skinny spears, ends removed and chopped in half (I used about 6)
1 oz. shitake mushrooms, stems removed (equal to about 2-3 mushrooms, sliced)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons mirin (sweetened sake) or sweet white wine
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Preheat oven the 400o F.
Lay 4 large (18" x 12") piece aluminum foil for each fish packet. Fold into thirds and open back up. Lay fish fillet in the middle third of each piece, then scatter the asparagus, mushrooms, and ginger over each. Drizzle with the soy sauce and mirin and season with a small pinch of salt (actually I forgot this part and didn't miss it), and black pepper. Fold the sides over the fish, then roll up the ends to secure into a fully sealed packet.
Arrange the packets on a large baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes (if 1/2" thick or less, bake for 15 min; if closer to a full 1", bake for 20 min). When baked, place each packet directly on a plate and serve. Be careful of the hot steam when opening the foil packet.
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