thyme snapper with tomato and olive tapenade

Again, I need to write this out before I forget what it is that I did. Today is the first day of eight that I'm home alone and I'm devoting all my moments of solitute to food and drink. I went to the South Melbourne market earlier today and bought a rib-eye (bone-in), snapper fillet, poussin, tiger prawns and a whole lot of roots, fresh vegetables and herbs. I have the now peeled and deveined prawns marinading in white wine, lemon thyme, garlic and parsley. In the meantime I washed, scored and removed the bones from the snapper, letting it sit to warm up a bit from the two degree fridge.

Then I peeled, deseeded and diced three tomatoes. Crushed one clove of garlic and mixed in previously prepared olive tapenade with newly added and freshly chopped corriander leaves, olive oil, lemon thyme, lime and pepper. I chopped up fresh thyme and finely diced a shallot. I gently placed the snapper in a pan with hot butter and olive oil and pushed the shallots and thyme into the pan to the sides of the fish once the skin on it started to crisp. I then spooned the shallots, thyme and hot butter/olive oil mixture over the fish while it all cooked. Once it was done I let the fish sit a bit and placed it on top of rocket and added a small piece of snow pea leaves.

Finally, I spooned some of the tomato mixture (which had been sitting in the fridge) over the top of the fish.

I harbour the thought of some top chef or trained chef in the making landing on this blog for some obscure reason. I imagine them laughing because I don't know the slightest thing about presenting the food well and obviously all my techniques come from my imagination and are not refined due to my lack of time. I take a mouthful of rocket, perfectly cooked snapper, tomato, olive and everything else thinking to myself, laugh away because this tastes absolutely marvellous. Maybe some capers too next time.