Salt crusted branzini

This bit of background threatens to be embarrassing, but I suppose it's time to embrace it or at the very least amuse myself with the obnoxiousness. Listening to NPR* the other day, I heard a story about a team at UMBI that designed sustainable* indoor aquaculture technologies that can be implemented in an urban setting* - basically, they are raising non-native fish in an indoor enclosure downtown, I believe, with the idea being that this can be replicated anywhere, regardless of proximity to water, thereby eliminating the potential impact on the local ecosystem and need to import fresh food. (You can read more about that here.) A few weeks ago, I found branzini at the farmer's market* when picking up our CSA share*, and thought it was odd. Yesterday, they had more and after asking, I was told that the group at UMBI occasionally brings up their fish to be sold at Mill Valley. Got to love that. E and I decided to pick up one for dinner. At $6, it was totally reasonable, and super fresh - they had apparently been dropped off that morning. Best of all, it gave E a chance to try the salt crusted fish recipe he saw somewhere a while ago.

The fish was about 1 lb, and came complete with all of its guts.

I haven't had the opportunity to clean a fish before (although I've dissected some), so I watched while E did all the work. After some deliberation we decided not to scale it - partially to save the mess, and partially because we hoped it would protect the fish from the salt.
After it was cleaned, it was time to bury the thing in salt. Most recipes we found called for rock salt, although a few said kosher salt was okay. The consensus, however, was that the larger the salt crystals, the better. We therefore hit the hardware store and picked up a 40lb bag for all of $6.

We laid down about 1/2 inch deep layer of salt on the bottom of a 9"x13" pan (better to hold in the mountain of salt coming), and sprinkled some pepper and scattered a few bay leaves on top. E stuffed the fish with some fresh thyme from the backyard* and laid it on top. Then, he packed salt around the fish, and we stuck it in the oven.An hour later, we pulled it out. Superficially it didn't look much different, but after scraping away the salt (which did indeed form a bit of a crust), it was clear the fish was done. Although it used quite a bit of salt, this was perfectly cooked and outrageously delicious.
The recipe:

One whole fish, gutted, scales on
Thyme
Lots of rock salt
Lemon juice
Pepper
Bay leaves

Stuff thyme into the fish, along with a little lemon juice. Lay on a 1/2 inch deep bed of rock salt in a 9"x13" pan. Cover the fish with a mound of salt. Bake at 425F for one hour.


Eric adds:
Just a note about the salt. We were going back and forth a bit over what kind of salt to use. We figured that a whole box of coarse kosher salt would work, but would be sort of pricey ($2.59 for 3 lbs, according to Safeway's site) and kind of a waste, but neither were we completely comfortable using driveway de-icer. Internet searches ranged from no mention to omigod your children will die.

Fortunately, the kid at Lowes pointed us to something we hadn't considered, which was rock salt for water softeners. Most of them came in these weird football shaped pellets and some of them were potassium chloride, instead of regular old NaCl aka Halite aka table salt, but Diamond Crystal apparently sells regular rock salt in 40lb bags. At $6 for 40 lbs, that works out to about 15 cents/lb,or roughly six times cheaper than using the coarse kosher.

Of course now we have 35 lbs of rock salt, but that's a different story.