A waste of wine?

As a simple means of ticking off another recipe last night, I whipped up a white wine marinade (p190). This marinade is described as suitable for fish or chicken, so I thought I'd try it on a fillet of tarakihi.


The recipe doesn't actually tell you how much fish or chicken you're supposed to be able to marinate with it, but since most recipes feed four, I figured a quarter-recipe would be more than enough for my single fillet.


The marinade combines finely chopped onion with white wine, lemon rind and juice, oil, garlic and parsley. I've just noticed I was supposed to include a bay leaf - oops, too late now! I coated my tarakihi fillet in the marinade: in fact, there was enough marinade there that it was more a matter of arranging the fish so that it was under the surface of the liquid.


I left the fish to marinate for 20 minutes while I got out my bamboo steamer and gathered some veges from the garden. I placed the fish and vege in the steamer and left if to steam for a few minutes. I'd never steamed fish before, and wasn't sure how long it would take. I definitely overestimated the cooking time, and the fish came out a bit dry.


It's hard to know whether the marinade had any tenderising effect on the fish. Fish doesn't usually need tenderising anyway, and he way I'd overcooked it had certainly added a firmness to the texture. I was a bit disappointed at how little flavour the marinade had imparted. There was a slight hint of lemon - and that's all I could taste. Served with plain steamed veges, it made for a remarkably bland plate of food.