Our garden has gone crazy over recent weeks so I’m looking for new ways to use the growing supply of vegetables that are ready to be eaten each day. This one brings in the green stuff…spinach wilted into lentils and a salsa verde made from fresh basil and parsley. There’s nothing like drizzling homemade salsa verde over a perfectly cooked piece of tray-baked fish that you have filleted yourself to make you feel ‘chefy’!

Ingredients

A whole orata (sea bream) or two fillets
A tin of brown lentils
A red onion
Half a large red pepper (or a whole small one) 
A handful of mushrooms
A handful of small tomatoes
A handful of spinach
A vegetable stock cube
A small bunch of parsley
A small bunch of basil
A lemon
A clove of garlic
Olive oil
Salt 
Pepper

Method

Start by chopping all your vegetable to make the lentil base.

Fry the onions with the peppers in a splash of olive oil until they start to soften. Then add the mushrooms, tomatoes, tinned lentils, vegetable stock cube and a splash of water and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Throw in the roughly chopped spinach and take the pan off the heat so the spinach wilts but doesn’t become over cooked. Season to taste.

Next make the verde salsa. Finely chop the basil and parsley. Mix in a bowl with a good splash of olive oil, a crushed clove of garlic and the juice of half a lemon plus salt and pepper.

I bought a whole sea bream which was very good value in my local supermarket but that meant filleting a fish for the first time. The whole process was a bit messy so you get a photo from before rather than after! But I did end up with two fillets which I placed on a tray with a little olive oil and seasoning and baked for 15 minutes.

All that’s left is the chefy bit…

Spoon some of the lentil mixture on to a plate, layer the fish on top and drizzle with the salsa verde.