This is a sheet-pan dinner, which means one pan goes in the oven and one pan gets washed. The flavor all comes out of the sauce, and the sauce takes about two minutes to put together.
It leans Mediterranean. Lemon zest and juice, a full cup of good olive oil, fresh garlic, dill, oregano and coriander. The fish and the vegetables both get coated in it, so you are not seasoning anything twice.
Get the oven to 425°F first so it is ready when you are. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the lemon zest and juice, olive oil, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, oregano and coriander. Use a bowl bigger than you think you need. Everything gets stirred in it, and a crowded bowl means half the sauce ends up on the counter.
Add the green beans, cherry tomatoes and onion to the bowl and stir them slowly until every piece has sauce on it. Leave the tomatoes whole. They hold their juice through the bake and then burst under the broiler, which is most of the point of putting them in.
Lift the vegetables out with a slotted spoon and let the extra sauce drain back into the bowl. You need what is left for the fish. Spread them over the whole surface of a large rimmed sheet pan in a single layer. Piled up, they steam instead of roast, and you lose the browning.
Put the halibut strips into the sauce left in the bowl and turn them gently until they are covered. Be easy with them. Halibut is firm but the strips will start to break apart if you stir them hard.
Lay the halibut strips across the pan, spacing them out among the vegetables rather than crowding them into one corner. Spreading the fish around gives every piece its own hot air and helps it color on top. Pour whatever sauce is left over the pan and give the whole thing a light sprinkle of salt.
Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes. Then move the pan to the top rack and broil about 3 minutes. Stay at the oven for this part. Broilers go from browning to burning in under a minute, and what you are watching for is a light gold on the tops of the fish and the cherry tomatoes starting to split. Pull it before anything darkens.
Bring the pan straight to the table or move everything onto a platter, and spoon the juices from the bottom of the pan over the top. That is where the lemon and the tomato juice ended up. Rice, orzo or a piece of bread will all do the job of catching it.
Fifteen minutes in the oven, one pan, and about 390 calories a serving. Halibut is what we run, but this works with any firm white fish cut the same way. Lingcod and rockfish both hold up well. If your strips are thinner than an inch, start checking at 12 minutes.
Recipe from The Mediterranean Dish.
