Jamie Oliver Inspired Steamed Seafood Packets

This is a classic example of a recipe that looks fantastic, but that turns out to be seriously lackluster. I was flipping through one of my Jamie Oliver books and saw this great recipe for seafood steamed with Thai flavours in a banana leaf, which he suggested was served with steamed rice.

This is what I did. Pretty close to his recipe, but i even increased the flavours a bit.

On a big piece of banana leaf, do the following:

Oil it slightly with some peanut or corn oil
Place a tsp or so of finely chopped garlic
Place a tsp or so of finely chopped fresh lemongrass
Place about 2 tsp of finely julienned fresh ginger
Place about 1/2 a finely diced shallot
Place about 1/2 a finely diced small red chile
Place about a small handful of ripped fresh cilantro
Place about a 1/4 of a red pepper, finely sliced
Drizzle about 1/2 a tsp of sesame seed oil
Drizzle the juice of 1/2 a lime

Now put down your seafood... I used

4 oz of basa
4 oz of perch
about 12 clams

spoon over about 3 tbsp of coconut milk

Fold over into a packet and bake at 20 mins at 400 .

I should have known when the recipe didn't ask for any kind of salt... no soy, no fish sauce, no salt. It was going to be a bit bland. I trusted it thought because it was a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Big mistake. This was bland bland bland. Not even all those aromatics and cilantro and ginger and garlic could save it. This was bleah. The dude said it was good but he's very polite. I don't think he cared for it much either.

I wouldn't make this again. But I am going to experiment this week with more steaming in banana leaves. I'm all over the concept, but this recipe was so boring. I'm going to take this concept and make a pesto sort of thing out of it. Stand by.

3/10