Baked Dory with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Cheese

I have a confession to make:  the only fish that I can cook is the dory fish!

I like that it’s readily available in the supermarket – cleaned and vacuum-sealed.  It doesn’t have tinik and most of all, hindi sya malansa.

During the lenten break last week,  I made sure to stock on some dory fish to cook at home since we decided not to go on a lenten ‘holiday’ this year.  I made use of the short break from work to clean up our rooms, and to get rid of office documents that somehow found their way into our home hehe!

I also made use of my free time to catch up on my readings.  I am finally done with The Monuments Men (super duper nice read!) but decided to give up An Abundance of Katherines k’se naiinip na ako sa ending hehe!  Next in my reading list is Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

Because I was obviously enjoying all the reading (with tea and biscuits at my side, of course), I looked for a dory fish recipe that’s easy-to-prepare and requires very minimal preparation steps.    I found one from The Eating Room, and it’s perfect because we have almost all the ingredients required in the recipe.

For this utterly delicious but surprisingly simple dory fish recipe, you will need:

• a pack of dory fish (1 pack has 3 big pieces of dory fish)
• 1 lemon
• 1 bottle of sun-dried tomato pesto sauce (I used Gourmet Farms)
• salt and pepper
• 2 kinds of cheese (I used parmesan cheese and hamburger cheese)

1.  Start by slicing the lemon round and thin.

2.  Line them up on a baking pan (we are using a convection oven so this 9-inch square pan that we got as gift last Christmas is perfect).

3.  Season both sides of the dory fish with salt and pepper, then lay them on the lemon bed.  Generously pour the sun-dried tomato pesto sauce over the fish.

4.  Make a layer of parmesan cheese, then top it with slices of hamburger cheese (you can make use of better cheese variety like mozarella or cheddar).

5.  Finish off with another layer of parmesan cheese (yum!).

6.  Bake at 350 F (around 180 C for convection oven).  The recipe called for 30-minutes baking time, but since we’re using a convection oven, we added 15 minutes more to the baking time to cook the fish completely.   We also removed the excess oil after 30 minutes, to maximize the heat.

O di ba, mukhang lasagna lang? 

It smelled wonderful, tasted wonderful and then wonderfully wiped off from our plates in a matter of minutes!

Best paired with toasted baguette or any french bread.

Clearly, it’s another jackpot recipe that I’m sure will see a lot of ‘repeat’ in the coming months hehe!

Recipe sourced from Baked Dory in Red Pesto Sauce by The Eating Room.