Serves four
700 g (1 1/2 lbs) brill fillets, skinned
15 g (1/2 oz) butter
150 g (5 oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
200 ml (7 fl oz) creme fraiche
6-8 fresh basil leaves, shredded
110 g (4 oz) Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 220C, 425F, gas Mark 7. Season the brill with salt and pepper. Use about half of the butter to grease a baking dish large enough to take the fillets in a single, snug layer. Lay the fillets in it. Dot the cherry tomatoes around and over them. Smear the creme fraiche over and around the brill and tomatoes, covering the fish more or less evenly. Scatter over the basil and then sprinkle the Parmesan evenly over the top. Grind a little more pepper over the whole thing and dot with the last of the butter.
Bake for 15 minutes, until the fish is just cooked through. Serve bubbling and sizzling.
What also got me thinking about smart, easy cookery was the paperback edition of Anne Willan's book In And Out Of The Kitchen - In Fifteen Minutes Or Less.
This is not a book about fast cooking - instead, it is a wise book all about making the maximum cooking impact from the minimum amount of time spent in the kitchen, and I recommend it to anyone who wants good food and who realises, as Willan says, that there is "no need to compromise with ready-prepared, packaged goods which are often expensive and always inferior in taste".
So, here is a cracking dessert recipe to follow your fish dish. Good ingredients are the key, so spend some money buying Valrhona or Green And Black chocolate, and get the choicest apple you can find. Start the meal with just a bowl of olives and some Sauvignon Blanc and, voila!, the best Tuesday supper ever, not to mention the best way to recover from that exhausting Thursday.