Sautéed Striped Bass with Lemon-Caper sauce

It has been awhile since I have last posted. The hubby and I took a wonderful trip to Napa/Sonoma valley and San Francisco. We enjoyed cooler weather, a lot of wonderful wines and some amazing food. It has taken me awhile to get back into the swing of things...but I am finally getting around to some posts.

When the hubby and I were in Sonoma we went to a wonderful restaurant on the Sonoma square: The Girl & the Fig. Along with some delicious wine and cheese, hubby had a particularly amazing fishdish. The fish was cooked spectacularly, but even better was the yummy lemon-caper sauce that was on top of the fish!

When we came back home, what better to cook than a dish that reminded us of our wonderful trip! I found a recipe for sautéed striped bass with lemon-caper sauce. The dish was fairly easy to prepare and definitely took us back to the cool weather and beautiful views of Sonoma.

I started out sprinkling the striped bass with salt and pepper. I threw it on the skillet with some basic olive oil for about four minutes a side. It could have browned slightly more, but it cooked nicely.

I placed the fillets in the oven to keep them warm, and started in on the sauce. (Sometime during this I also blanched some asparagus, leaving it in ice water).

I threw the capers in the pan, added the clam and lemon juice and boiled until reduced. I then whisked in the butter.

Serve the sauce over the fish and that is it! That simple! I served ours with a very basic side of asparagus (that at some point I had warmed back up in a pan with some olive oil).

The Girl & the Fig served the fish and sauce over a bed of steamed spinach. This was smart. The sauce was delicious and wasn't soaked up well by the asparagus. In the future I would serve this over rice or noodles (or spinach if I could get the hubby to eat it - I am not sure I have the power that the nice restaurant in Sonoma seemed to have -- he did eat some of the spinach that night). I am definitely going to experiment more with capers. The little round yummy bits add a delicious sharpness to the dish, and I can imagine it working well with many other sauces. I have always had capers with smoked salmon and cream cheese on bagels...but never tried it in a fish sauce. I am glad I have now!