I don’t eat enough fish. It’s not intentional, and it’s not that I don’t like fish. It just isn’t something I often think about. Also, I am wary of buying fish in the supermarket because of a few bad experiences. But, yesterday I decided to go for a drive to the fish market and I bought some fresh cod.
In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it until I got home. What I decided to do was cook the cod in a bit of white wine with shallots, garlic, heirloom tomatoes, and herbs. This dish came together perfectly. The fish was tender and flaky and had loads of flavour.
I served the cod with boiled new potatoes tossed with parsley, butter, salt, and pepper. These potatoes are a simple and delicious side dish that I have really fallen in love with over the last year or so. They can be served with almost anything and they look just as good as they taste.
All right, let’s look at how I made…
Cod with White Wine and Parsleyed Potatoes In 30 Minutes or Less
I made this meal as a late Sunday lunch. So, I started cooking much earlier than I usually do.
The first thing I had to do was get the potatoes going as they take the longest to cook. At 2:25 I started by putting eight small new potatoes in a pot with hot tap water, to which I added salt. I put the pot over high heat with a lid and brought it to a boil. Once the pot started to boil I removed the lid.
I cooked the potatoes until they were fork tender. This took about 25 minutes start to finish.
While the potatoes were cooking, I took care of everything else. First, the vegetables.
The first vegetable I cut was the shallots.
Just like when slicing an onion, I cut the top and bottom off, peeled it, and then thinly sliced it with the grain. That’s it.
A shallot is kind of like a small onion. It is a member of the onion family but is more closely related to garlic and leeks than white or red onions. Having said that, it tastes more like an onion than garlic. It just has a milder flavour. It does grow in clusters like garlic. Generally, within the shallot bulb, there will be two to three shallot cloves. For more information take a look at this Wikipedia article.
Once the shallots were cut I got down to business on the garlic. I crushed and peeled two cloves and then thinly sliced them.
With the shallots and garlic out of the way I went to work on the tomato.
I had thought about using cherry or grape tomatoes in this dish which would have been delicious. But, when I saw these heirloom tomatoes I knew that these were what I wanted.
I only ended up using half of one of the tomatoes, which I diced, but the rest will not go to waste.
An heirloom tomato is an old variety of tomato. These are not touched by modern-day breeding and selection methods. Where modern tomatoes are mostly bred for shelf life, travel stability, and disease resistance, heirlooms are bred for flavour and appearance.
For more information check out this article on heirloom tomatoes.
Now it was time to move onto the herbs.
First up was some basil. I took four or five large leaves, rolled them into the cigar shape and sliced them very thinly into what is known as a chiffonade.
It is important not to chop the basil too vigorously as they will bruise and become bitter. Slice, with a sharp knife, only as much is as necessary.
At this point I took a big hand full of spinach, picked the stems off, and cut it into large chunks.
The only other thing to do other than the actual cooking was to cut up some parsley. To do this I rolled the parsley into a tight ball and ran my knife over it once. That was all.
Right before I started chopping the parsley I turned my skillet on to medium high heat.
With all the slicing and dicing done it was time to move over to the stove.
Because my pan was heating while I was chopping the parsley it was ready to go. I added a good amount of olive oil, the shallots, and the garlic. I let this cook until the shallots and garlic started to soften. This took about three minutes.
With the shallots and garlic softened I added the tomatoes into the pan along with three sprigs of thyme. I cooked the tomatoes out for about two minutes.
With the tomatoes cooked it was time for the fish to go into the pan. I put the cod in the pan presentation side down first. The goal isn’t to sear or get colour on the fish as there will be way too much moisture in the pan already. The goal is just to cook it.
After two minutes of the fish being in the pan, I added about one cup of white wine. As soon as the wine started to boil I flipped the fish.
Not all of the pieces of cod were the same size. At this point, the smaller pieces were cooked so I started taking them out of the pan. Within about two minutes all the fish was cooked and out on a warmed platter.
I warmed up the platter by running it under very hot tap water and then quickly drying it off. Putting the fish on a warm platter helps it to keep its temperature while I was finishing the sauce.
With the cod out of the pan, I added the spinach, basil, and two tablespoons of butter to the sauce and turned off the heat. I mixed the butter into the sauce which helped to thicken it. Then, I tasted and adjusted the seasoning with salt and pepper.
The sauce was almost done, the fish was done, now it was time to finish the potatoes. At this point, they had just finished cooking. I drained them, added a pinch of salt and pepper along with a tablespoon of butter and half the parsley I cut up. Potatoes finished and added to the platter with the fish.
I finished the sauce with the remaining parsley and then poured it over the fish.
Done and done.
I plated myself up a serving and lunch was set with one minute to spare.
This meal was delicious! It was a beautiful lunch but would make an equally beautiful dinner. I can easily see this dish being on the menu at a trendy bistro for $24, but as you’ve just seen you can make it at home in less than 30 minutes.
I hope that you have enjoyed this post. If you have you may also like White Bean and Chorizo Soup in 30 Minutes or Less.
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Thanks for reading!
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