White Fish With Bacon And Leeks

This recipe is from the Jamie Oliver book "Jamie At Home", or as we call it around here "You know, the Jamie book we always use!!" When I first saw this recipe I thought, OK Jamie, so you need to bulk up your book. Little did I realise what a bloody lovely concoction this is.
Fish and bacon I always thought just didn't work. Then when I thought about it, I realised, that they are both salty and why wouldn't they? So I plodded through the recipe thinking well if it doesn't work I won't be disappointed and also I'll be proved right, which living with a genius mathematician/software developer/awesome guitarist doesn't happy very often. Well on the day of the fish and bacon, drum roll please ... it didn't happen either.

Before baking in the oven

It is possibly my favourite spring meal! Not only is it just the salt that connects them, it's the difference in textures, the way the bacon juices run through little canals in the fish bringing it alive (I imagine not dissimilar to Venice), the sweetness of the steamed leeks, the ready made sauce they produce that you find when you lift them out of their baking tray and the thing that I love the most, the simplicity of a few ingredients whacked in an oven.
I did these cheeky little fillets with some buttery jacket potatoes, just because I am from a family that believe "No carbs! No meal!" Also they are great with some lemon steamed rice! It is a very light meal and also very comforting, like I'm receiving a internal tummy snuggle. The only thing that this meal makes me want to do, apart from nap after I've eaten it, is to go and catch the fish myself! A slight maggot repulsion has stopped me so far but now the weather is nicer I may give it a go. At the very least I can sit quietly at the river reading my book and produce a lovely picnic for my boyfriend who will do the fishing for me. My last fishing attempt did result in an unplanned triple homicide as I didn't pull the line out quickly enough and they swallowed the hook. Took me a while and a few glasses of pinot to make me feel better. Anyway, here is the lovely recipe from "Jamie At Home". A recipe I will be using alot in the coming months! Maybe I'll just tweak it a bit to make it more my own, baked in garlic butter perhaps or swap the rosemary for basil, add a few cherry tomatoes and serve with pasta ...

What you need:

• 16 baby leeks (I used 4 large and hoped for the best, worked out fine)
• 4 x 200g white fish fillets (skin on!!)
• 1 large lemon cut into 8 wedges
• 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 8 rashers of bacon (Jamie used streaky I used smoked, hope he doesn't mind all this ad-libbing)

for the marinade:

• a couple of sprigs each of fresh rosemary, thyme and bay leaves
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• olive oil
• 1/2 lemon

What to do:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C or gas 6.
For the marinade, bash thyme, rosemary and bay with slat in a pestle and mortar unitl the salt goes green. Put in 2 lugs of olive oil, add pepper and lemon.

Boil leeks in salted water for 3 mins just to soften, drain and let steam dry.

Put the fish, lemon and rosemary sprigs into a bowl with the marinade and toss to cover eveything. Put the fish skin side down into a preheated roasted tin and put the marinade and bacon on the top of each fillet. Roast for 15 mins until the bacon is crispy.

Put onto a platter and pour all the juices over the top and dig in! I hope you like this dish as much as I did!

The finished article