Aegean Coast Psari Plaki (Ψάρι Πλακί)

Psari plaki of the Aegean coast is a whole-fish bake laid over onions, tomato, parsley, and olive oil, the kind of pan that makes a modest fish feed a table. It is not a fish drowned in sauce. The onions melt, the tomato thickens, and the fish stays itself, sweet at the bone, with enough pan juices for bread.

The method that decides it is simple: cook the onion and tomato bed before the fish goes in. Fish cooks quickly. Raw onions do not. If you put everything in the pan at once, the fish waits too long and dries while the sauce catches up, poor thing. Give the vegetables their head start, then bake the fish just until the flesh releases cleanly.

The region is the dish's surname, so I keep this Aegean-coast version spare: no cream, no cheese, no show. Good olive oil, and patience. It belongs beautifully to the fish-allowed days of Lent, when the table is plain but not mean, and it is weeknight food if your fishmonger has done the cleaning.