King Fish Roasted In Butter Served With A Delicious Provençale Sauce
Updated April 15th 2021
This wonderfully flavored fillet is roasted to perfection and then served with a delicious Provençal style sauce/or salsa to serve with it. This fillet is slathered in an herbed butter before going in the oven and then it roasts in that same delicious butter. I love to serve it basted in that butter sauce and then topped with the very flavourful Provençal sauce. This recipe works well with just about any fish fillet out there including salmon or any white fish you might prefer or have on hand.
I wanted to start off by telling you guys a little about this fish. It’s a fish that is locally caught on the north side of Trinidad. King fish is a medium to large size fish that is most often sold in steaks. It is often fried, stewed, curried or made into a delicious soup. On a rare occasion it will be sold as a whole fillet. While I was living in Trinidad I received a beautiful fillet as a gift from one of the local specialty shops that I loved to shop at while we lived there. It was my first time having it fillet style and I loved it. It was slightly thinner in cut then the steaks and it roasts up wonderfully.
I love this recipe and it has become a very popular one on the blog. I have been hoping to get my hands on some king fish here in Canada - fillet form so that I could recreate it just as I had made it in Trinidad. 2 years passed here and all I could find were steaks. Love them but not how I wanted to reshoot this recipe. I was resolved to just using any white fish fillet (because of course any white fish fillet or even salmon fillet would be wonderful and tasty in its place), when I finally found a King fish fillet. It was double the size of this one but I grabbed it while I could and used half for this recipe and the other half is in my freezer.
It’s a beautiful fish and it was fabulous roasted with the Provençale sauce. This fish could have been prepared many ways and would have been fabulous! I really wanted the fish to take the centre stage in this recipe and that is why I decided to make it this way. The sauce lends to it but doesn’t take over. The fish is flaky and buttery and the sauce is savoury and has layers of flavour in it from a slight spice to a little tomato tang and some good briny and salty goodness from the capers to the olives and to the anchovies. My kind of flavours!! It’s so good I could eat it by the spoonful. Provençal sauce is typically a tomato based sauce that is served with all sorts of meat including seafood. It is usually stewed until the tomatoes really cook down and become a nice and reduced sauce but in this version they stay more intact. Possibly more salsa like than a sauce, perfect for spooning over this fabulous roasted king fish fillet.
This could easily feed 4-6 with some sides and would be great for a dinner party. It roasts in the oven for approx 20-30 min because of its thickness and the sauce is whipped up in minutes. I will be making this for company again for sure. So let me share with you how I prepared it and it might give you a little inspo on preparing your king fish fillet or any other white fish you may have had in mind.
If you like this recipe, you are going to love these ones:
- Roasted Citrus Salmon With Green Olive Salsa Verde
- Mediterranean Style Baked Cod
- Sheetpan Salmon and Potatoes With Veggies
Recipe
For the fish
Ingredients
- 1-½ lbs king fish fillet
- 4 tbsp of butter at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon of paprika (or more according to taste)
- 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley and extra for garnish
- 1 teaspoon of lemon or lime juice
- 1 teaspoon lemon or lime zest
- Salt and pepper to your preference
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400°F and butter or grease a baking sheet.
- Combine the butter, paprika, parsley, lemon zest and juice as well as salt and pepper and stir until well blended
- Spread the butter mixture over the the entire fillet both sides. And sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper (optional)
- Transfer to baking sheet and roast fish until it’s done and opaque in the centre. (This took approx 25-30 minutes with this size fish- cooking time will vary depending on thickness)
- Transfer fish to platter, tent with foil for a few minutes while you make the Provençale sauce.
For the Provençal sauce
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- ¼ teaspoon of chili flakes
- ½ teaspoon of fresh thyme
- Zest of one lemon or lime
- 4-6 small Roma tomatoes seeded and chopped
- 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste
- 2 tablespoons capers rinsed and drained
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- ¼ cup of pitted and chopped Kalamata olives or a blend of whatever olives you may have on hand
- 1 pinch of sugar – to take the edge off the acidity of the tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Heat the butter and oil in a medium sized pan on medium heat and add the garlic, lemon zest, chili flakes and thyme and sauté for a couple minutes until very fragrant.
- Add the tomatoes, anchovy paste, capers, olives, vinegar and sugar and partially cover and cook for a few minutes until the tomatoes soften. Stir in the olives and parsley, taste for seasoning and then it’s ready to serve over the fish garnished with more parsley.
Recipe Notes
- Storage - Leftover fish can be store in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days. I like to store the fish in a separate container to the leftover sauce - because sometimes I like to add any leftover sauce to other dishes.
- You can use any white fish fillet in this recipe or even salmon, if you cant get your hands on king fish where you are.
- Cooking time will always vary depending on the thickness of your fillet. So keep an eye on it after the 18-20 minute mark. You will know when its done when the fish is no longer translucent but is opaque and when it flakes easily at its thickest point when tested with a fork.
- Feel free to add different herbs or seasoning to the herbed butter according to your taste and even adjust the amounts to taste as well.
