Marinated Sea Bass with Dill.

It is quite common when you take a look at the native cuisine from any one particular country to come up with a particular theme or common approach / name for the catering or cuisine from that country. Such as Chinese Food, Thai Food etc but to be honest it could be argued that with regards to Spain there is no such thing as “Spanish” food as with the make up and historical heritage of Spain it is not quite that simple.

The reason for this is that Spain is an amalgam of its constituent parts that is to say it could be described as a political construct which is made up of disparate groups with their own languages, cultures, cuisines etc. These autonomous regions have been slowly amalgamated through a number of different processes throughout history but have all kept their own distinctive features.

The number of autonomous different regions that form what we would nowadays refer to as Spain is 17; they all have their own linguistic variations of the language, in some cases it's a different sub language entirely and as well as their own cultures most definitely have their own individual cuisines. One of those autonomous regions comprises the north-western province of Galicia.

Galicia is surrounded on two sides by the Atlantic Ocean and it is pretty understandable to think that for a region that has such an involvement with the sea, its cuisine would also be heavily influenced by the sea. That having said not all of Galician cuisine is all seafood based and the region can lay claim to some quite gorgeous recipes and provincial dishes and are all well worth trying out.

Enough of all of the chat and lets get down to the serious business of food!

This particular recipe and the ingredients that we are going to include are designed to serve four People. As such you're going to need the following:

300 g sea bass fillet, skin and bones removed
Pinch of Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil or a lighter flavoured olive oil if possible.
Juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
1 handful of curly endive or other tasty salad leaves.

Again as with all dishes where you are preparing fish. The preparation of the dish is extremely important. Start by slicing the fish as thinly and as neatly as you possibly can. If you feel at this point that the slices of the fish aren’t necessarily as thin as you would like, a trick here would be to take the slices of fish and put them in between two sheets of cling film and press them out very gently using a rolling pin.

Take the fish and remembering to have it just one layer deep; place them on four cold serving plates. If you are preparing this dish quite sometime in advance of serving then cover the plates with cling film and place the plates in a refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

A few minutes before you are ready to eat, take the fish and sprinkle it with a little salt and pepper and drizzle your olive oil and lemon juice over the top of fish. Then finish by sprinkling the dill over the fish.

Next take the salad leaves and dress with a little salt, olive oil and lemon juice and place in any tiny pile in the centre of the plate on top of the fish.

This particular starter is such a delicate dish and a very refreshing way to start a meal. If you have any reluctant feelings about serving raw fish, the lemon juice when dr4izzled over the fish beforehand serves as a form of cooking and powerful marinade in matter of seconds.

Scott James writes about a great many Internet Travel based issues and more on the above can be found at Hoteles Galicia For a more complete overlook at Tourism in Galicia try http://www.turgalicia.es