Baked White Fish with Pine Nut, Parmesan, and Basil Pesto Crust

Try this Baked White Fish with Pine Nut, Parmesan, and Basil Pesto for a low-carb, Keto, low-glycemic, gluten-free, and South Beach Diet friendly dinner that’s special enough to serve to guests. Use the Recipes-by-Diet-Type Index to find more recipes like this one.

This Baked White Fish with Pine Nut, Parmesan, and Basil Pesto Crust produces results so spectacular that no one would possibly imagine it’s diet food.  Serve this with a lovely salad of baby spinach and some type of roasted vegetable and it would be a perfect low-carb or South Beach Diet friendly dinner for any special occasion.

I love hanging out in the kitchen, and I don’t mind spending time on projects like making homemade chicken stock, making slow roasted tomatoes, or roasting bell peppers, but I’m not the kind of cook who wants to spend hours on a fussy recipe. I especially love recipes that are easy to prepare but have interesting ingredients with lots of flavor, and this recipe for baked white fish with a crust made of chopped pine nuts, Parmesan, garlic, pesto, and mayo certainly fits that description.

I made this with fillets of halibut, but you can use cod, tilapia, grouper, or any type of mild white fish. This is easy enough to make for dinner after work, but if you make it for dinner guests, they’ll probably never guess how easy it was to throw together.

Let the fish come to room temperature while you preheat the oven to 400F/200C. If your pieces of fish have a flatter side, put that side up so it’s easier to spread on the crust mixture. (You can use one large casserole dish if you don’t have individual dishes like this.)

Combine pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, minced garlic, basil pesto, and mayonnaise. I used pesto from a jar but if you have your own pesto in the freezer, that would be even better.

Serve hot and wait for compliments. This would be great with something like Roasted Cauliflower with Red Bell Pepper, Green Olives, and Pine Nuts for a low-carb meal.

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 400F/200C. Spray individual casserole dishes with non-stick spray or olive oil (use one large casserole dish if you don’t have individual ones.) Remove the fish fillets from the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature while the oven reheats. (Having the fish at room temperature is very important or it won’t cook before the crust topping gets too brown.)

Use a large chef’s knife to finely chop the pine nuts and mince the garlic. Mix together chopped pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, minced garlic, basil pesto, and mayo.

Use a rubber scraper to spread the crust mixture evenly over the surface of each fish fillet. Pile it on so all the crust mixture is used.

Bake fish 10-15 minutes, until fish is firm to the touch and crust mixture is starting to lightly brown. (I baked the fish pieces in the photo for 13 minutes.) Serve hot.

This recipe is suitable for any type of low-carb eating plan as well as any phase of the South Beach Diet. Some of the ingredients in the crust topping are high in fat for South Beach, but only the Parmesan cheese has saturated fat and there’s not a lot of topping.

Use the Recipes by Diet Type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.

If you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you. Or if you’re a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.