2005-05-03

cod puttanesca

Last night's supper was fish baked in sauce, but what a sauce!

  • Sauté 4–5 cloves of garlic, minced, in about 5 tbsp of good olive oil until just turning golden.
  • Add a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes packed in juice and bring to a simmer.
  • While simmering, drain and rinse a small can of anchovies and fire those into the sauce. Then add about 20 pitted black olives (Kalamata, baby) and a heaping tbsp of capers. Add a pinch of crushed chiles or some harissa, sambal olek, etc.. Do not add any salt to this sauce.
  • If your sauté pan isn't oven proof, pour the sauce into a baking dish. Lay fresh cod filets on sauce (we also had some ocean perch or "sebaste" in French, which is damn cheap and very good) and bake in a medium oven (around 350) for 10 minutes. Sprinke with fresh parsley and tuck in.
We ate this with basil mashed potatoes (russets + olive oil and butter + milk + fresh chopped basil + salt and pepper) and garlicky, lemony sautéed red Swiss chard. The sauce is potent, so I opened a fairly big wine, a 2002 Vacqueyras, to go with it.

The kids powered back the fish, so I'm afraid there were no left overs for bloggers seeking adoption in our household. On a related note, if "Kurt" could be persuaded to come east for a visit this summer, I would gladly make the trip as well to ply him with sourdough buckwheats and sage sausage in exchange for his insight on classroom management

8 comments:

  1. Does the site feed pick this up?

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  2. Using an unheated baking dish is not a problem. The approximately two cups of piping hot sauce will warm most any dish up right away with plenty of heat to spare. In fairness, the 10 minute cooking time is a guideline; check the cod with a fork to see if it flakes. If so, it's done.

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  3. "Kurt" is only waiting for certain confirmation calls from certain fuzzy people, after which he will purchase his tickets for his trip east this summer. He is already conditioning his kneading muscles in preparation.

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  4. Why do the children have to eat so much? What about us your blog readers...we get hungry too.

    My backup plan was sending your link to my cooking friend, EGIT, so he can "borrow" your recipes. A girl's got to have her cod puttanesca.

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  6. Depending on the timing of "Kurt"'s trip, PMC may be able to "pop down" for a few days. Keep me in the loop or let the puttanesca fall where it may.

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  7. Very exciting!

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  8. PMC made this baby for the 'fuzz and me with perch (cheap, cheap, cheap!) during PMC's trip (avec famille) to the New England test kitchen of F,NRS. Awesome!

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