ROTW tonight: Seabass wrapped in Ham

Hwsgo has been showing signs of jealousy lately, that recipe- of- the- week (ROTW) has been supplanted in my affections by the Sara-Simon project. Well ROTW, I still love you, I still want you, and just to show my absolute adoration of you, I'm going to cook you tonight. And tonight's ROTW is:

Sea Bass wrapped in Ham

* gutted and deheaded sea bass of 700g or so
* parma ham
* really good olive oil (Ed: not Spanish oliveoil then...)
* green beans
* lemon juice
* salt and freshly-ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C
2. Wrap sea bass tightly in parma ham. Leave no gaps.
3. Drizzle with a little olive oil and bake for 15 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, blanch some green beans for a few minutes in boiling water and then refresh in iced water.
5. Toss the beans with plenty of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. An edgy alternative is to use preserved ginger intended for sushi.

It took me 3 supermarkets to find the ingredients for this recipe. First I tried my local Waitrose; yes, they had seabass, both heads-on and filleted, but after hanging round the counter waiting to be served, I gave up and went to Tesco at Gatwick. Now the big T is usually pretty good: decent wine selection, lots of choice in most sections. But the fish counter: urrgh. I could smell it from the next aisle: it wasn't pretty, and neither were the sad grey lumps pretending to be seabass. So unwilling to backtrack to W, I went to the slightly-smaller Tesco between my work and my house. And found exactly what I was looking for: two fresh, headless lumps of seabass. You don't always have to travel to get what you want, although I may re-try this recipe on a weekend when I can get down to one of the fish suppliers on the coast. I'm a little sad about the beans though. They're from Zambia, the only other choice in W today being Kenya. I really dislike upping my food miles, so I'll just have to add green beans to my allotment planting scheme, and wait until they come into season again. So how did it taste? The beans were wonderful; spiced without being spicy, and curiously tasting slightly minty. The fish was firm and subtle, but I really wasn't sure about the combination of bass skin and ham, and I did spend a lot of time picking out bones: I suspect something a little less blokey and a little thinner-skinned, like cod perhaps, would work better in this dish. I think I may have to try this again.

Meanwhile, weight this morning is 168.6lbs. A small rise, but considering the amount of food and alcool consumed over the weekend, not much to write home about. Unlike the tapas. We spent a happy hour or so bouncing from bar to bar in the Tapas street in Granada, having plates ranging from fried fish to ham to seafood arrive with every drink whilst working our way through all the local beers we could find. True foodie happiness, and a wonderful foil to the elegant dinner in Seville the night before. Today's food intake is a little more mundane than that: 1 bowl SpecialK and milk, 2 SpecialK bars, 1 bag baked crisps, 1 machine hotchocolate and 3 machine coffees. But then, I am trying to lose weight whilst working my way through a cookbook, and needs must...