Roasted Bluefish and Asparagus

Wednesday June 13
Whenever we drive out to Cincinnati's best (and oddest) exotic food market, Jungle Jim's, we leave dinner plans up in the air, because we know we will come home with something we'll want to cook immediately. In this case, it was a sparkling fresh six-pound bluefish, lovingly scaled and filleted by one of Jungle Jim's obliging minions. (Usually we keep and use fish heads and bones, but bluefish is too strong to make good stock.)
Bluefish doesn't keep well, either, and though we love it, we couldn't eat that much of it at a sitting. So when we got home, Holt fired up the smoker and had one side of it brined and mesquite-smoked by the end of the evening.
The other fillet was dinner, prepared in the simplest way possible, as bluefish has a savor that needs to stand out on its own. First we roasted a sheaf of fresh asparagus in olive oil in a 500-degree oven, then removed it to the warming plates. We put the fish, skin side down, in the same oiled pan, and continued to roast until it was just done. We then drizzled it with our homegrown basil oil, and a few crystals of salt. Elegant but simple, which is what people often say about me.