Whole Roasted Branzino in Grape Leaves with The Most Colorful Salad

Another one for the journal: 

Recipe for Fish - Link

Recipe for Salad - Link 

This came up as part of our dinner conversation tonight. We spend hours upon hours every day agonizing over what we are having for dinner. With so many options available to us, it's so hard to settle on something that we think will be the best! (Although, what does "best" even mean?? I feel like it's so, so much driven by what you're craving in the moment...) Anyway, dinner ideas rarely venture into the 'grilled fish and salad' territory. The reaction these words evoke are typically in the vein of 'mehhh... what about chicken? beef? pork? anything else???'. 

Ho ho ho, are we constantly mistaken!!!

Yesterday, we spent time scouring various grocery stores accumulating ingredients for our birria. As I was perusing the shelfs for the perfect guajillo chiles for the stew, a bottle of nondescript grape leaves caught my eye. Immediately, I recalled my favorite office work lunch at the mediterranean restaurant I frequented with my coworkers pre-covid! My go-to dish was a grilled branzino fillet wrapped in grape leaves served with a side salad. Wow did my dinner wheels turn go "this is the best way to eat fish!"...

Fast forward 24hrs, I insisted dinner is going to be just that. Grilled branzino fillet with a side salad. I shut down all conversations, made CC brave the windy and rainy weather outdoors, in order to fulfill my dinner cravings. 

As it turns out, my dinner cravings were right. It is really hard to go wrong with a 1, 2 combo like fish and salad. Healthy, fresh, and simple. So delicious and satiating. Not to mention it was a 30-minute meal. What more can you ask for? 

We need this as a strong reminder that 'grilled fish and salad' isn't just a safe and/or boring fall back when we can't come up with anything new. It's can be insanely vibrant and exciting too!

Notes

• Use the salad recipe as a rough guide. Didn't have enough chickpeas, so threw in some corn. Cooked it a little in a pan with some EVOO. Cut the EVOO in the dressing given that. Fine bulgur wheat just needs a soak.  I think the proportions are kinda way off in this recipe. It called for WAAAAAAY too much bulgur! Probably 30-35g is sufficient for us. Used 1/4 of a round radicchio. Gorgeous salad.
• For the fish try to do a single layer with the wrapping so all the leaves will be nice and crisp.  We didn't have fresh dill and just threw in some parsley and dried dill. Worked out just fine. Dried dill has a good flavor.