Roasted white fish wrapped in smoked bacon with lemon mayonnaise and asparagus

Those of you who know me have probably gathered that I often seek to fulfill personal "culinary quests" when looking for new recipes. Two such quests are as follows:

• I'm trying to learn more "weeknight dinner" (i.e. prepared in 40 minutes or less, delicious and nutritious) recipes, because lord knows I do enough fancy 3-hour Sunday afternoon affairs and that won't be viable once I get a real job. Upon finding such a recipe that I really like you might hear me say, "This is going in my weekly rotation."

• I'm trying to find a fish recipe that my lovely but pescephobic girlfriend might choke down without incident. It is my notion that she must eventually be compelled to tolerate fish dinners, dammit, because they're such a good lean source of protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and the like.

I think I might have found a good one here. After all, how could anything wrapped in bacon and slathered with lemon zest and fresh rosemary be too intolerable? And I can prepare it in under half an hour, nice! (Definitely "weekly rotation" material.)


Anyway, I got this recipe off of Jamie Oliver's website (he be a little annoyingly self-righteous sometimes, but damned if he doesn't have some good easy, quick dinner recipes), and since I didn't do anything to significantly change it I'll just link you to his instructions.

One note though: does the bacon in the picture above look a tad bit... undercooked to you? That's because it was. WHOOPS. We ended up throwing it back in the oven for an extra 5 minutes and I forgot to take another picture. Maybe you wouldn't have noticed had I not told you?

I'm not sure if this is more the fault of the type of fish I got (flounder) or the oven or my cooking utensils or Jamie Oliver's instructions -- it certainly wasn't my bad, because I followed the recipe to a T --  but 10-12 minutes in the oven might not be enough to cook the bacon and fish thoroughly enough. I suggest making it more like 12-15 min, or until the bacon looks crisp and golden. Normally when you bake bacon in an oven it only takes 10 or so minutes, but I think that when it's wrapped around something as moist as a fish it probably needs more time.

Oh well. You live and learn, right? Can't always get it right on the first try! But I will say that it was plenty delicious once it was completely cooked through.