Sea bream in a salt crust

Sundays are the days for croissants and coffee, long lazy brunches and nice slow cooked dinners. Last night I thought I'd break in the Jamie Oliver in Italy cookbook, as pictured in the last post and make some salt crusted seam bream. The little chisel and hammer to free them of their crust always look great in restaurants, but two whole fish and a kilo of sea salt look a bit daunting when uncooked.

So when Jonny was updating his parents on the status of the house, I started on the bream. It was a matter of stuffing the bream with a whole load of fresh herbs and lemon and then placing them on a bed of salt, mixed with a beaten egg, some lemon and fennel seeds. If only my salt had looked a bit more like wet sand, it would have come out perfect. But I overdid the water splashing, so it looked more like a mud pool after a tropical rain storm. In the end, it didn't really matter, since water has the positive quality of being heavier than salt and sinking to the bottom of the dish. It tasted nice and that is what matters!

Furthermore, the weekend was a house-weekend, more on that later.....