Sear-Roasted Sea Bass with Blood Orange Salsa

Kent came for dinner tonight, a pre-ZAP planning meeting (we're all volunteer leads for the Good Eats & Zin event). Whole Foods had both halibut and their sustainable Chilean sea bass... sea bass is my favorite, and it was half the price. So I went with the sea bass. We really liked the fish and the salsa a lot. The blood orange salad didn't do much for us.

Larry loves carrot cake. I don't but I make it occasionally anyway. He loved this version. The cream cheese frosting is spectacular.

• Smoked Trout Rillettes (Fine Cooking #42, January 2001, p. 44)
• Sear-Roasted Sea Bass with Blood Orange Salsa (Fine Cooking #97, February 2009, p. 42)
• Blood Orange & Radicchio Salad with Hazelnuts & Shaved Parmigiano (Fine Cooking #97, February 2009, p. 42)
• Lemony Salt-Roasted Fingerling Potatoes (Food & Wine, October 2006)
• Classic Carrot Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting (Fine Cooking #97, February 2009, p. 72)

Wine: Four Vines 2005 Naked Chardonnay (Santa Barbara County, California). Tonight's dinner just wasn't going to match with a red, with all of the oranges, so we reluctantly pulled out one of our few whites. If I'm going to drink a California Chardonnay, I like it unoaked, like this one. Pretty good.