My Best-Selling Dish – Hariyali bream with tomato kachumber, by Karam Sethi

What is it? Main course Price £13 GP 50% Orders 10% of total orders

This dish was inspired by the sea-salt roasted sea bass with burnt tomato relish on the menu at Zuma. It's the perfect way to show off really fresh, flavoursome fish with lots of strong flavours without swamping the taste of the bream itself - perfect for a restaurant that specialises in seafood, as we do. It's this combination of the bold and the delicate that makes the dish so popular.

Wild black bream, fished off the coast of Hampshire, is marinaded in a paste of spinach, coriander, green chilli, fenugreek, ginger, garlic, mustard oil and yogurt. The fish is skewered and cooked over live charcoal in the tandoor. To accompany, we make a tomato kachumber by slowly charring tomatoes over charcoal to remove the skin. This flesh of the tomato is then mixed with diced chillies, spring onions, ginger, baby plum tomatoes and coriander stem. The freshness of the tomatoes lifts the dish and complements the herbs in the marinade.

This dish has been on our menu since we opened three years ago and we never take it off - it's available all year round.
Karam Sethi, head chef, Trishna, London

Ingredients
(Serves one)
150g bream fillet, pin boned and scaled, skin on
1tbs baby spinach paste
2 chopped Indian chillies
2tbs coriander paste
1tsp ginger and garlic paste
2tsp mustard oil
Pinch of dry fenugreek leaf
1tbs Greek yogurt
Pinch of turmeric
1tsp salt

For the tomato kachumber
4 baby plum tomatoes cut into halves
1tsp diced ginger
1tsp diced spring onion
Salt to taste
1tsp mustard oil
1tsp lime juice
2tsp tomato pulp

Method
Combine all of the main ingredients, apart from the bream, in a blender to form a smooth glossy marinade. Apply to bream. Leave for a couple of hours. Cook bream in 250° oven for 10 minutes.

For the tomato kachumber, make the tomato pulp by cooking one tomato in the oven for 30 minutes, or until softened through. Remove the skin and seeds and chop the flesh into a pulp. Then mix with all of the ingredients and serve alongside the bream.

RECOMMENDED WINE

Flavoursome and spicy, this dish needs a powerful wine which would ideally have spent a little time in the barrel - the creaminess of the oak will counteract the spice. Rhône grape varieties will hit the spot, so look out for aromatic Viognier or oily Roussanne/Marsanne. I recently tried some good quality Viognier from a cooler region of New Zealand which would be perfect for this dish, or you could try Californian or Australian Roussanne/Marsanne blends.
Xavier Rousset is co-owner of Texture and 28°-50°, in London