Grilled Roasted Bass

With Jason Bond

Heather Atwood of "Food For Thought," the food columnist for the Gloucester Times visited with Jason Bond just prior to opening his new restaurant Bondir. He showed her how he roasts a fresh sea bass in an open fire in his firplace at the location for the restaurant. The bass is seasoned before and after with a citrus vinaigrette with fresh hops and served over a bed of fresh, local greens, potatoes and poached egg.

Ingredients

Grilled Sea Bass

Ingredients:
Bass, whole (or sardine, mackerel, or flounder)
Citrus Vinaigrette
Salt & pepper to taste

For the salad:
Seasonal greens (The salad greens and vegetables should be whatever is seasonal and in the markets.  Choose ingredients you like and maybe one new ingredient for fun.)
Raw vegetables
Small potatoes
Green Beans

Instructions

1. Fillet the fish, but leave the skin on. (The skill will peel off after the fish is cooked.)
2. Coat the fillets in this vinaigrette and allow to sit for half an hour.
3. Fire your grill a half an hour before you would like to eat.  Burn the wood down to a nice bed of hot coals.  Grill the fish on the skin side for five to 10 minutes, until it looks opaque.
4. Roll the filet over and peel off the skin, then transfer to the salad greens.

To make the salad: 
1. Wash the greens and raw vegetables, and boil potatoes or beans if you’re using them.  Plate the salad while the fish is on the grill.  Drizzle with citrus vinaigrette.  

Recipe courtesy of Jason Bond, Bondir, 2010.

From “Food For Thought,” by Heather Atwood, Gloucester Times, 2010.

I had dinner last Saturday night at Jason Bond’s new restaurant in Cambridge, MA, Bondir.  The next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the carrot soup.  Bond is brilliant at keeping food surprising, but not overwhelming, just tiny tremors that shake the “local-food” expectations of a dish, and, along with it, one’s spirits.  

The word “local” is mummified in cliche these days, but one gets the idea that Jason is a rare chef/cook who doesn’t know any other way to cook.  He grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, spending time on his grandfather’s farm breaking quarter horses and being told to “go out and pick the wild asparagus in that field before you put the horses out there.”  Later, he went to Kansas State University, where he studied orchestral trombone and double bass, and first worked in the kind of restaurants that make their own mayonnaise.  In the past ten years he’s been a culinary great on the Boston horizon; he was chef de cuisine at Barbara Lynch’s No. 9 Park from 2000-2004 and Executive Chef of the Beacon Hill Bistro from 2006-2010.

But it was probably more the years on his grandfather’s farm that informs Jason’s style now:  He buys chickens, mutton and pork from Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds and Farmyard in Concord, MA, and Jason talks about the chickens as if he’s the farmer.

For beef, Jason buys something called Dexter Beef, which is a sort of “mini-cow” originally from Scotland.  Jason does all his own butchering and curing.  (The smaller cow is clearly easier for him to manage and store.) Jason explained just one of the virtues of being one’s own butcher: “A commercial grocery butcher cuts for efficiency, keeping labor down and going for maximum weight in more expensive cuts.  Our priority is the quality of the meat...”  

Jason fondly refers to his grandmother’s food preservation.  He still buys large quantities of beautiful seasonal produce, uses every bud and flower of it, and preserves what he can, which is the true key to avoiding a dull winter of squash, and squash alone, when trying to eat as locally as possible.  

I’ve met Jason a few times; we made a cooking video together while he was still setting up his restaurant.  When I called him to check on the timing - if he was too busy with the restaurant renovations to cook with us - he answered cooly, “Yeah, sure, I don’t have a kitchen yet, but that will be fine.”  

Jason prepared everything in the fireplace at the cozy nook in the front of the restaurant.  By the fire, he prepared a salad of local greens and vegetables culled from his garden and the Whole Foods down the street, a lemon vinaigrette to which he added hops he’d picked up at the Local Food Fest, and a black bass which he held under the grate of the low-burning fire and “broiled.”  

Bondir is a tiny restaurant with a cozy fireplace and genuine, wildly imaginative, sustainably-inspired cuisine, which is probably just the way Jason Bond’s grandparents did it.