baked cod, potato, smoked chili, tomato; corn on the cob

The small ears of corn were a little larger than the last time I had served them, which pleased me at first, but it turned out both a plus and a minus. Larger ears, it had seemed, would be a good thing, although I can’t say exactly why I had thought that. It did mean that shucking them was a little easier and a little faster, but in this size the cob itself was borderline edible (although I ended up eating all of them, partly because I like variety in the texture of food, and because I hate the messiness that goes with eating only the kernels.

  • one 17-ounce cod fillet from P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company in the Union Square greenmarket, washed, rinsed, and quartered (to arrive at pieces of equal size and thickness for 2 diners), placed inside a platter on a layer of coarse sea salt, with more salt added on top until the cod was completely covered, set aside while a cooking bed was prepared for them composed of 12 ounces of ‘Lilly’ German Butterball new potatoes from Savoie Organic Farm (new to the Union Square Greenmarket this summer) sliced to a thickness of roughly 1/4″ and tossed into a bowl with olive oil, salt, black pepper, and a pinch of a dried smoked serrano pepper from Eckerton Hill Farmthe potatoes arranged overlapping inside a rectangular glazed ceramic oven pan, to be placed inside the oven for 25 minutes or so, or until they were tender when pierced but not fully cooked, then, having already been thoroughly immersed in many fresh changes of water to bring down the saltiness, the cod was drained, dried, and placed inside the pan on top of the potatoes, drizzled with a little olive oil, sprinkled with black pepper, blanketed with thin slices [although even the picture above shows that this time I didn’t slice it thin enough, since the tomato should almost melt] of one yellow/orange heirloom tomato from Campo Rosso Farm (“There isn’t another farm in the U.S growing the variety of Italian chicories they do, and they do it at an incredibly high quality.” – Suzanne Cupps, of the restaurant Untitled at the Whitney), the tomatoes seasoned lightly with salt and pepper and the pan returned to the oven for about 8 or 9 minutes more (the exact time depends on the thickness of the fillets), removed when done, arranged on the 2 plates with the potatoes still below it, garnished with scissored dill flowers from Quarton Farm