Fish, Fennel, and Olives or “Giada is Captain Obvious”

I stole this recipe from Giada, she may have a ridiculously huge head on a tiny body, and her show may be entirely centered around her cleavage, but she’s got some good recipes. I’ve made this one twice now.  It’s so easy, it’s ridiculous. And I feel like any time you make fish it always seems so elegant and special (with the exception of fish sticks, or fish and chips – which I LOVE, don’t get me wrong).

Ingredients:

4 filets (or chunky pieces) of white fish – tilapia/sea bass/cod

2 heads of fennel – thinly sliced

1 small white onion – thinly sliced

1 garlic clove - minced

½ cup of pitted calamata olives – chopped roughly

1 large orange

½ cup of white wine

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 370.

In a bowl, combine wine, the zest of the orange, the juice of the orange, and the minced garlic.  Add salt and black pepper. 

In a baking dish, drizzle bottom with olive oil, and layer the veggies, olives, and chunks of fish.  Top with the wine/orange mixture and drizzle with a little more olive oil. 

Cover with foil and bake for ½ hour (or until fish is cooked).  The fennel may stay slightly firm – but that’s ok.

Serve over rice. I think I serve too much stuff over rice…but I love rice!   

Some Giada Thoughts: Why does she always feel the need to state the COMPLETELY OBVIOUS? Like it really bothers me when she is tossing a salad (ha!) and says “ok so now just toss the salad, because we really just want to combine things in the salad” – like no sh*t!  Is THAT why you toss a salad? (ha, again).  Or when she says that she likes strawberries because they are red, or that she’s adding lemon to achieve a lemon-y flavor. Yeah, derrrr.  Also it bothers me when she picks and chooses when to have an Italian accent. I literally cannot listen to her say “pancetta” without gagging.  But that’s another story.