Sea Bream in 'Crazy Water' (Acqua Pazza)

Wash the 300 g of cherry tomatoes, dry them properly and cut each one in half.

💡 Dry them. Wet tomatoes hitting hot oil spit hard, and this dish already has you leaning over an open pan.

Check the fish: run a finger from tail to head along the sides to feel for stray scales, rinse the cavity and pat the whole thing dry inside and out.

💡 A dry fish is a safer fish in a hot pan, and the small dark line of blood along the backbone inside the cavity is worth rinsing away — it is the bitterest part of any fish.

Set a wide pan with a lid — big enough to hold the whole fish flat — over medium heat and pour in a generous swirl of olive oil.

💡 The fish must lie flat in one piece. If your biggest pan is too small, ask for fillets instead and cut the cooking time roughly in half — do not curl a whole fish to make it fit.

Add the whole garlic clove and a few sprigs of parsley and let them sizzle gently for a minute, until you can smell the garlic.

💡 A minute, no more. Garlic goes from fragrant to bitter in about fifteen seconds, and burnt garlic will taint the whole sauce.

Tip in the halved tomatoes and cook them for 3–4 minutes, pressing a few against the pan with a spoon, until the edges soften and juice starts running.

💡 Crushing a few is what starts the sauce. The rest should stay intact so you get whole soft tomatoes on the plate alongside the broth.

Slide the cleaned fish into the pan and let it cook for 2–3 minutes without moving it.

💡 Lay it away from you so any splash goes forward, not onto your arm.

Turn the fish over to the other side — slide two spatulas under it, one near the head and one near the tail, and flip it in one confident movement.

💡 One spatula in the middle will fold a whole fish in half. Two, spread apart, support the length of it — this is the single moment in the recipe where things go wrong.

Pour in the 100 g of white wine and let it bubble for a minute or two until the raw alcohol smell has burned off.

Add the 100 g of water and season with fine salt.

💡 This is the 'acqua pazza' — crazy water. Two hundred grams of liquid in a wide pan looks like almost nothing, and it is meant to: the fish releases its own juices and what you end up with is a small amount of intensely flavoured broth, not a soup.

Put the lid on and cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, spooning the broth over the fish once or twice.

💡 Medium-LOW under the lid. A hard boil tears delicate white fish apart; you want the liquid barely trembling so the flesh sets gently.

Test for doneness: slide a knife tip in at the thickest part behind the head and lift slightly. The flesh should come away from the backbone cleanly and look opaque white, not translucent.

💡 Translucent means not yet; dry and flaking apart means you have gone past it. Overcooked white fish cannot be rescued, so check at 8 minutes rather than at 12.

Turn off the heat, take the lid off and let the pan stand for 2 minutes.

Serve the fish with its broth and the softened tomatoes spooned over, and finish with plenty of freshly chopped parsley.

💡 Do not leave the broth in the pan — it is the entire point of the dish. Spoon every drop over the fish and serve bread alongside.