
Tablespoons chopped fresh lemon thyme or regular thyme Piece (1 inch) fresh ginger, peeled and grated Medium tomatoes, cored and cut into 1/4-inch wedges The dish is light, summery, easy on the budget, and delicious on the plate.

A little chicken or vegetable stock or clam juice that cooks in the dish mixes with the sweet fish juices to sit in as a sauce. When it's done, squeeze lemon juice over the fish and add more of that lovely lemon thyme. You cover the dish tightly with foil for its half hour in the oven. But you can set it on baby golden potatoes, which are sliced and steamed until tender, along with wedges of tomato, and a generous sprinkle of grated fresh ginger, lemon rind, and lemon thyme (or regular thyme). You can't grill white fish because it'll dry out. Bake these plain white fish on a bed of vegetables with some dramatic seasonings. You should master a couple of simple methods that are as easy as sliding a swordfish steak on the grill. Yes, you can deep-fry or pan-fry them, but that doesn't take cooking know-how.

Those four fish are deeply under-appreciated, mostly because they're plain. I weave in bluefish and mackerel, both more reasonably priced, and the large array of locally caught white fish, often the cheapest fish in the market, that are not cod: haddock, pollock, hake, and flounder. It also means that though I could practically exist on a diet of halibut, swordfish, striped bass, salmon, and tuna, my wallet would explode if I kept that up too long. I eat fish often enough to know exactly where to go to get the freshest (if you don't have a dependable vendor, try your neighborhood farmers' market) and how much everything costs.
