Pimentade de poisson — French Guianese fish in roucou-tomato sauce
French Guianese pimentade is a fish preparation built around a seasoned cooking liquid rather than a dry curry or a fried-fish sauce. Tomato, onion, cive, lime and chilli form the aromatic base, while roucou gives the sauce its distinctive red-orange colour. The fish remains in recognisable steaks and cooks in that liquid just long enough to take on the seasoning without falling apart.
Fish species vary with local catch and household preference, so the practical choice here is traceable sea bream cut into thick bone-in steaks by a fishmonger. That keeps the texture appropriate while avoiding any instruction for wild catching or primary fish processing. The purchased weight is 900 g; nutrition uses an estimated 720 g edible cooked flesh after the central bones are discarded.
A thirty-minute refrigerated lime-and-garlic marinade seasons the fish without turning the exterior chalky. Roucou oil then carries colour through softened onion and cive before diced tomato cooks down to a sauce that still shows some pieces. The marinade joins the pan with a measured amount of water, so acidity and seasoning are not thrown away.
The final twelve-minute poach stays at a gentle simmer. The steaks are moved as little as possible and checked beside the bone for 63 °C. The correct finish is moist fish that flakes in sections, not flakes scattered through the sauce; the sauce should cling lightly rather than resemble a thin soup.
