Recipe for easy broiled fish with lemon curry butter

Here's a plan of action that works for dinner any night of the week: Melt some butter; add in some minced garlic, herbs, spices and a squirt of lemon; then pour it over whatever you have your heart set on eating. With almost no effort, you'll have a sauce that makes anything taste better.

It works on chicken. It works on steak. It even works on beets and turnips.

But of all its possible applications, my favorite is to drizzle it on fish fillets before running them under the broiler.

The reason this sauce goes so well with fish is that they are so different in nature. Fish fillets are mild and lean. A spiced garlic butter sauce is bold and rich. They round each other out.

Start by choosing a mild white fish fillet. I gravitate toward blackfish and hake because they're sustainable. Hake is the less expensive of the two, but it has a less refined texture, with big, coarse flakes. It's delicious, as long as you don't overcook it. Flounder is another dependable option.

Ten minutes before you want to put dinner on the table, preheat the broiler and start making the sauce.

You don't really even need to follow a recipe for this kind of sauce; it's very forgiving. Melt your butter and stir in as much or as little garlic as you like. I add ginger for extra intensity, but you can leave it out. Then check the refrigerator and unearth the last sprigs of dill or thyme left over from grander cooking projects. Chop them up, add some to the sauce, and save the rest for garnish.

As for spices, anything fresh and fragrant in your cabinet is fair game. Finish with a squeeze of citrus for tang.

It will be one of the quickest, most savory dinners imaginable, one that's good any night.