Thanks guys - sorry its taken me so long to get back.
What I wanted to do was cook a tog my favorite way to cook seabass whole. A key part to that is the seabass skin, which gives a lot of flavor to the sauce. Thus, for the dish I needed the scales off, skin on. After a lot of work, I did get the scales off the tog, but after a hot sear, the skin browned but stayed on the tog, so tog turned out to not be suitable for the dish, as seabass skin comes off when seared. With the tog, the sauce was quite a step down than with seabass.
The recipe for whole seabass (one of out top favs) for 2
gut, remove tail, fins, head (optional.) in heavy iron skillet, heat 3 tbl oilive oil to just smoking, add fish, sear couple minutes till skin comes off, same the other side, then remove partially cooked fish to platter, cover with foil to keep warm.
turn heat down to low/medium, add few cloves chopped diced garlic, brown just slightly, then deglaze with a bottle of clam juice and 1/2 cup white wine. Add a light (true) marinara, we make our own, the stuff sold in jars in stores is too thick. you want thin to be able to taste the seafood first, not the tomato first. Cover, cook on low for 10 min, then put back the fish, spoon sauce over the top 1/2 of the fish, turn heat to medium, when the sauce bubbles, cover and turn heat down to low (just above simmer). Cook 5 min, then flip the other side for 5 min. - or until done, if this a 5# you were lucky to get
We serve over rice and with steamed broccoli with a squirt with lime juice - a good veggie anytime you cook a garlicky dish. And of course crusty French or Italian bread for the great garlicky seafood sauce.
Very easy and delicious.
