Instructions

---

1. Trim and cut fish.  Sprinkle flesh side with seasoning (I use Penzey’s Florida Seasoning, which is a lemon-orange-black pepper blend) and a little salt and set aside.
2. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
3. Add olive oil to hot steel pan.  When heated add onions and fennel to pan and sauté over medium-high heat until brown spots start to appear on the vegetables.  Remove vegetables from pan to a cutting board in a single layer so they don’t steam.
4. In the pan where you cooked the vegetables, add the juice and vinegar.  Bring to bubbly simmer and cook liquids down over medium to medium-high heat until reduced to syrupy consistency, reducing by at least one-half, maybe more.  Syrup should look like thin dark molasses without being burned.  Reserve a couple of teaspoons of the syrup, and set the pan with remaining sauce on a back burner.
5. Heat a second steel pan that has been lightly sprayed with non-stick cooking spray over medium-high (emphasis high) heat.  Add the fish skin side down, if you like crispy fish skin (and I have a couple of fish skin fans here; cooking the skin first keeps it from steaming when you place the fish in the oven to finish), and cook for 4 minutes.  Flip fish in pan to flesh side down, and place pan in your preheated oven to cook for another 4-6 minutes.  Char is not very thick and doesn’t require much time, but home ranges and ovens can vary in intensity.  Use your best judgment for doneness.
6. While fish is finishing in the oven, add the vegetables back to the first sauté pan with the orange juice-vinegar reduction, toss with remaining syrup to coat, and set aside over lowest heat to warm through and keep warm.
7. When fish is done, plate some of the vegetables and slide a piece of fish on top, skin side up. Drizzle plate and/or fillet with the reserved syrup and serve.

Recipe courtesy of Jane Ward, www.localinseason.com, 2010.