Food & Wine

A whole roasted fish is the aquatic analogue to roast chicken.

It's easy to prepare, forgiving and adaptable.

Drizzle on some oil, season it with herbs and spices or pretty much leave it alone, and bake it at almost any oven temperature along with anything else you want to roast, like cauliflower sprinkled with cumin. You can stuff it with chilies, garlic and citrus to perfume its tender flesh. Or not.

As long as you have a good, fresh (and preferably sustainable) fish, you've done the hardest part.

To tell if a fish is fresh, look it squarely in the eye. It should be clear and bright, not sunken and cloudy. If you can get close enough to take a deep whiff, the scent should be clean and saline rather than fishy.

A word about the head: If you're worried about your dinner giving you the fish eye, you can ask your fishmonger to lop it off. But you will miss out on the tastiest morsel, that is, the fish cheek. I like to dig it out with an espresso spoon, but the tip of a knife also works.

Even without the head, the bones and skin add intensity to a whole fish, giving it much more flavor than you get with the standard fillets and steaks. It's like the difference between cooking a whole chicken and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The former is rich and succulent. The latter are bland and easy to dry out.

Each person you're feeding needs a 1-pound to a 1 ½-pound fish. Although you can roast a fish at pretty much any oven temperature, I usually go fast and high — 450 degrees for 15 or so minutes — mainly because come dinnertime, I am hungry.

For this recipe, I went with zesty, spicy ingredients to brighten up the gloom of winter.

I stuffed the fish with slivers of jalapeño, sprigs of cilantro and slices of lime.

For a sauce, I whirled together a caper-laden salsa verde in the food processor. The salsa verde added just the right spicy, herbal note to the delicate, moist fish flesh.

Come to think of it, it would taste just as great with roast chicken, too.

WHOLE FISH WITH LIME SALSA VERDE

Time: 40 minutes

Yield: 4 servings

2 bunches cilantro

2 bunches scallions

2 jalapeño peppers

¼ cup drained capers, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 limes

½ cup plus 8 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

Black pepper

4 whole fish, like sea bass or black bass, 1 to 1 ½ pounds each

3 teaspoons coarse kosher salt

1. To make the salsa: Coarsely chop 2/3 cup of cilantro leaves and transfer to a bowl. Thinly slice 2/3 cup of the dark green scallion tops and add to the bowl, reserving the bottoms. Seed and finely chop one of the jalapeños and add it to the bowl. Stir in the capers and garlic. Finely grate in the zest of 1 lime and squeeze in its juice. Stir in ½ cup oil. Season with black pepper. Cover and let stand until ready to use.

2. Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Pat each fish dry and coat with 2 teaspoons oil. Generously season the outside and cavity of each fish with the salt and black pepper. Transfer fish to the prepared baking sheet. Thinly slice the remaining 2 limes and seed and slice the other jalapeño pepper. Divide the lime slices, jalapeño slices, remaining cilantro sprigs and scallion bottoms among each fish cavity. Bake until fish is just opaque and flakes when pressed gently with a fork, 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Serve fish with salsa verde on top or alongside.