Grilled Seabass in Acqua Pazza

Acqua Pazza (crazy water) is a simple sauce of fresh tomato with chile pepper into which you can poach any firm white whole fish or fillet. When I learned this recipe in Italy, we used bream fillets and slipped them into the sauce to simmer until just cooked through. When I was shopping at Fish King I found some beautiful fresh seabass caught off the coast of Santa Barbara. Since these pieces of fish were thicker and better suited to grilling or pan-sauteing, I went that route. Buddy wanted to try the fish grilled, so that's what we did. Fresh tomatoes are out of season so I used some leftover canned San Marzano (Italian) ones which are great. I used a simple fish stock in my sauce so that it tasted of the sea and complemented the fish perfectly.

In my version, the fish and sauce never meet until they both show up on the plate, but the result was fantastic. Like all cooking, it's about starting with the best food you can find and improvising along the way.

1 pound seabass (two pieces)
5 tomatoes (peeled and seeded)
1 glove garlic, chopped
1 red chile pepper, diced
1 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
2 cups fish or vegetable stock
salt to taste

Saute the garlic and chile pepper in the olive oil until the garlic is just softened but not brown. Add the tomatoes, oregano and stock and cook about 10 minutes. Mash up the tomatoes. When complete, turn off the heat and stir in the parsley.

Separately, set the grill on high. Salt the fish well with sea salt on all sides. Oil the grill and cook the fish with the cover down for about 4 minutes. Turn and cook for another 4 minutes. The fish should not be totally cooked through but will continue cooking as the sauce is completed.

Once the sauce is done, arrange fish on a plate and spoon over the Acqua Pazza sauce.