I’m surprised I don’t post more cod recipes, considering how much of it we eat. Typically here it’s salt cod, but sometimes we can now get hold of fresh too. Fish Lady surprised me yesterday with some beautiful (and huge) fillets of cod. Perfect for lunch in the garden.
Often cod or bacalao is served over patatas a lo pobre here (slowly braised in olive oil) but it was too hot to stand over a pan of hot oil and my waistline, I knew, would thank me for cooking the potatoes another way. The oven was on as I was baking bread, wisely I was keeping cool outside. I decided to cook the potatoes in the bottom of the hot oven and then to cook the cod in my griddle pan at the last minute.
Ingredients (no measurements here, you know how much you can eat!)
- Cod Fillet cut into portion and lightly oiled and salted on both sides
- Potatoes cut in half then into thick half circles
- A large onion quartered and cut into thick slices
- About 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- A cup of stock (I used chicken but you can use vegetable or water)
- Half a sliced red pepper (or use some slices of tinned roasted peppers)
- Seasoning
Mix the potatoes, peppers and onions with the oil and season. Put into a deep ovenproof dish, pour over the stock and cover tightly with foil (or a lid). Cook on high for about 40 minutes and then for 20 minutes with the foil removed.
10 minutes before the potatoes are ready, heat a griddle pan until smoking hot and then cook the cod filler starting with the skin side down. A couple of minutes on each side is probably fine, depending on how thick they are.
Serve the cod on top of the potatoes with some fresh lemon. I also had a bowl of home made tomato sauce which we spooned over the top. Filling but not too heavy, and only a few minutes spent in the hot kitchen….perfect!
Chica Andaluza 
Suena genial y tiene una pinta espectacular. Y ahora con estos calores no hay nada mejor que una receta que requiera el mínimo tiempo posible en la cocina…
Que tengas un domingo estupendo y fresquito 😉
Gracias Giovanna, cuando he hecho mi digestion, creo que me voy a tirar a la piscina!
Qué bien! Yo también 😉
Delicious, though I’d probably swap the peppers for allioli. You are making me miss Spain 😉
Now there’s an idea…next time with alioli! Aren’t you over some time in August…mind you, that’s still a way off 😦
Yes I think so – it should be boiling hot and humid by then, but I’m dreaming of bacalao cooked with garlic and olive oil regardless 😉
At least you can sit by the sea at some point and enjoy some sea breezes to cool off!
A lovely dish and great idea for the potatoes.
Life would be sad without potatoes I think!
Most definitely!
We are going to have so many scrumity dishes to eat when I come and visit.
I’m hoping the more I mention it, the more of a reality it will become. 😀
Have a beautiful week ahead.
🙂 Mandy xo
Well.. you never know, one day it might come true!
…and if you don’t have the oven on, the potato dish cooks beautifully in the microwave!
Too ture 🙂
I might pass on the cod Ma’am (all the more for you!) but those spuds are going to make their debut tonight on Serendipity Farm. That’s what I LOVE about my early morning forays into the ether, I get to pick the very best recipes to make for my evening meal :). Cheers for the delish recipe and it looks like the fish lady is doing a good job 🙂
Funny – when I wrote this one up I thought “well, at least half of it could be eaten by narf77 and maybe Steve could eat the fish”! Have a great day 🙂
No cod here unless we raid the very VERY expensive providore deli in town for some bacalao and that AINT gonna happen any day soon so hopefully the fish quotient could be satisfied with some flathead, some snotty cod (not cod but definately snotty…) or by Steve sitting around the bend at midnight in his little tinny with his rod accidentlly over the salmon farm nets 😉 )
It’s funny isn’t it how accidents like that happen?!
Yup…he is a VERY bad aim when he is casting 😉
If you ever find yourself in need of a new recipe for cod, try out portuguese webs on cooking. They say they have more than 365 ways of cooking it, that´s more than one per day! My favourite is bacalhao a bras, which, I think, is evil for our waistlines …But you know, once a year, or better said, una vez al año no hace daño 😉
I so agree with you – we are planning a trip to Portugal int he sumer as Big Man loves the Bacalo dishes there and the choice. We usually fill a cool bag with salt cod to bring back with us too!
I can’t decide if the cod or the potatoes look better. Why choose? Glad you paired them!
Why choose indeed – and then there’s always room for an extra spoonful of some leftovers!
I like the “only a few minutes” part! Mmmm… this looks dandy!
Yes, it doesn’t take long to go from raw and opaque to cooked and perfect!
Those cod fillets look just scrumptious: lucky you to be able to buy them so fresh! Lovely soul food type of dish! Funny, I had a Portuguese lady as household help for many years – no way could she convince me of the deliciousness of bacalao and she must have tried every one of her recipes!! To each their own, I guess 🙂 !
I didn’t used to like salted bacalao and (I admit) given the choice I’d choose fresh over salted – but if it’s properly desalted and cooked well (and the Portuguese really do excel at this!) then I’m up for it!
What a great way to get double use out of your oven!
It was a case of being economical and also saving myself from the heat!
A great dish, Tanya! Those cod fillets do look nice and thick, perfect for this kind of dish. Thank heavens for the Fish Lady! I think the warmer weather has us all looking to cook lighter. I made a mackerel dish, vaguely similar to yours here, last week and today I made a baccalà salad. That salad caught Zia by surprise and it looks like I’ll be bringing her some baccalà so that I can repeat it for her. 🙂
Yes Fish Lady is impressing me and even though we’re almost last on her round, she always has something exciting tucked away for us! Do hope you’re going to be posting that baccalá salad – if it impressed Zia it will knock the socks off the rest of us!
Thank you for the vote of confidence, Tanya. I think Zia was impressed that I remembered the salad. It’s been well over 30 years! 🙂
Ah, a recipe from your toddler years 🙂
That is delicious. Great to see that summer light in you picture. We’re still waiting. Today looks OK, but this is the first year that I’m still lighting a fire every evening – a bit for atmosphere and a bit for warmth.
It makes my poor photography look marginally better when there is sunlight around 🙂 Can’t believe you’re still slighting fires…mind you, we were too up until a few weeks ago and still are using quilts on the bed. It’s such a weird year and the temperatures during the day are nowhere near what they usually are.
I’m not a huge fish fan, but I do love cod.
Me too – it’s a classic 🙂
Cod’s not a favorite at our house, but sub-in some halibut, and I think we’d be right there 🙂
Love those taters!
Or just the potatos…..!
I often struggle with using cod, it gets too tough in curries and I feel the grill doesn’t do justice to its flavors! Love love love your recipe and the braised olive oil potatoes are the perfect accompaniment! I’m trying this out soon…
I think it just needs to be popped in at the very end but then (unless you’ve used fish stock) you just don’t get all that lovely flavour in curry….glad you liked this one!
Wonderful.
🙂
Perfecto!
Looks a good way to do spuds. (and easy) I’m not wild about salt cod but in moderation (or disguised in sauce) it’s ok. Fresh is much better. 🙂
The spuds seem to have been a big hit. We had some leftover and I made a tortilla the next day and the flavour was amazing!
What a lovely dish, and not too intensive so you can focus on being outside and enjoying nice summery weather instead of slaving away over a stove. I love cod – it’s so versatile, though much like the atlantic wolf-fish I try not to eat it too much because it’s endangered 😦
Yes, you do have to be sensible about where your fish comes from. Am now off to look up Wolf Fish!
It’s incredible – plump and white, like cod, fantastic structure and bigger I think so you can often find large, perfectly rectangular fillets. It’s amazing to cook with but not so hot for the species alas. I’d recommend trying it once though!
Thanks for that Charles – will have to investigate further!
interesting menu and also looks very good for health