Sea bass with pesto

Sea bass in a home cooked pesto. The sea bass is farmed in the open Atlantic off the Canary Islands - the fish is of the highest quality and is earmarked for the finest restaurants, including Michelin starred ones, and one cannery: Alalunga.

The cannery recommends the sea bass with pesto over broad beans or butter beans, or with pasta.

Farmed sea bass is more sustainable than wild caught, as it avoids by-catch and overfishing, and is also fattier resulting in a juicier finished product. Sea bass with pesto is a traditional recipe made by fishermen. Alalunga makes its pesto in house, toasting the pine nuts there and using the skin of the sea bass to thicken the pesto rather than Parmesan.

The brothers use northern Spain's famed Arbequina olive oil as it is milder than the punchier extra virgin olive oils from the south of Spain, and complements rather than overpowers the delicately flavoured white fish.

About the cannery:

Alalunga is a cannery in Cantabria, founded by brothers Alvaro and Pablo Huidobro in 2017. The name is part of the albacore tuna's scientific name: Thunnus Alalunga. The brothers hail from a family of foodies and their knack for cooking, they say, is instinctive, honed on the many family trips to Cantabrian restaurants they took as children, and their grandmother's cooking.

The quality of the Alalunga range is down to a number of factors. Here are three:

Cooking methods that are novel in the canning industry. The brothers use the sous vide technique where fragile white fish like hake and sea bass are sealed inside a vacuum pack and cooked in a water bath at a carefully regulated temperature so as to preserve their delicate flavours and texture. 

Precisely timed recipes. The pair down kitchen tools just before the cooking is complete, and let the steam ovens where the sterilisation process occurs, finish the work and bring the recipes to fruition. 

And most importantly, the highest grade raw materials available are used - seasonally caught cuttlefish, line caught Galician hake, and, in this case, premium sea bass farmed off the Canary Islands.