Baked Halibut with White Wine, Olives, Capers and Tomatoes

This recipe and photos were provided by Sally Roeckell and were originally published at Table and Dish.

Looking for a fantastic dinner recipe? This dish delivers. This baked halibut starts with a beautiful fillet from Heinen’s Seafood Department. When shopping for halibut look for bright white, glossy flesh. That’s exactly what I found.

This dish is slightly reminiscent of a puttanesca.  You may have enjoyed spaghetti alla puttanesca which is an Italian pasta dish invented in Naples in the mid-20th century. Its ingredients typically include tomatoes, olive oil, anchovies, olives, capers and garlic. Yum! Why wouldn’t you put those ingredients in other things?  I’ve made it with various white flesh fishes and shrimp, even clams and mussels. SO, feel free to change up this recipe with your favorite protein. You can serve this with any starch you prefer.  It is great with mashed potatoes but today I served it with linguini to mimic a puttanesca dish.

This dish has power!  After making it and serving it for dinner I sent a photo of it to my son who attends college in Washington DC.  I teased that he should come home because he was missing out on a great dinner.  Well, yesterday I came home from shopping and as usual, I walked into the kitchen to greet my two youngest who were working on their homework at the kitchen counter.  They had guilty looks on their faces and seemed to be waiting for me to realize what they had been up to.  All of a sudden it dawned on me that the music I was hearing was coming from the piano in the living room. Only one of my kids plays the piano!  I ran into the living room to find my sweet son who had pulled off the most amazing surprise.  I’m NOT kidding — generally, nothing gets past me.  Paul managed to pull off flying home without his parents having a clue.  Maybe it was the baked halibut that tempted him to come home? Whatever it was, I’m beyond thrilled to have him here.

It goes into the oven looking just like this. Simply move some of those ingredients over and place the fillets on the bottom of the pan.  Spoon some of the ingredients and sauce onto the fish.  All those delicious juices you made with the tomatoes, white wine, olives, capers, shallots and garlic will bake with the halibut to create an amazing flavor.

You’ll see that I have only seasoned with pepper as the capers and olives lend plenty of salt to this dish. The shallots add a mild onion flavor without overpowering the dish. Keep your heat at medium so you don’t burn your shallots or garlic. Once they soften you can move on to the next step.