Comfort food: plain fish and potatoes.

Cod, to be specific; salted cod, but not ‘salt cod‘.

And Carola, to continue with specifics; originated in Germany, even better than Yukon.

I know there are absolutely no cod on the shores of Liguria, so the name of this recipe, ‘Ligurian Cod’, isn’t authentic, but the taste sure is.  The recipe is called ‘Ligurian fish and potatoes‘, although its author appears to have been pretty casual about the origin of the fish varieties he suggests; I assume it’s about availability this far from the Mediterranean.

It’s Mark Bittman’s recipe (or at least the one that appears in his 2004 article in the New York Times is my source), but I’ve been using it for so long I think of it as an adopted child.

This is another of those meals that we usually have to wait for cool weather to enjoy, because there’s definitely an oven involved.

It’s a wonderful dish, and very easy to put together.

The picture above was taken just before the cod was placed in the oven.

 

• one 17-ounce cod fillet from P.E. & D.D. Seafood at the Union Square Greenmarket, prepared along the lines of a recipe from Mark Bittman which I came across almost 12 years ago: I cut the fillet into three pieces (2 of them equaling the weight of the third, and laid them on a bed of coarse sea salt, then completely covered them with more salt, setting them aside while I sliced, to a thickness of less than 1/4 inch about 14 ounces of small carola potatoes (yellow flesh, creamy) from Keith’s Farm, tossed them with a tablespoon of olive oil, salt, and pepper, scatterd them in a ceramic baking pan, cooked them for 30 minutes or so in a 400º oven, or until they were tender, meanwhile thoroughly immersing the cod in several changes of water and drying the two pieces before placing them in the pan on top of the potatoes, topping the fish with a little olive oil and scattering them with some freshly-ground pepper, returned the pan to the oven for 8 to 12 minutes (the time would depend on the thickness of the cod), arranged on 2 plates, chopped parsley from Keith’s Farm sprinkled on top, finished with a scattering of purple micro beets from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• Chinese cucumbers from Norwich Meadows Farm, sliced into bitesize pieces, sautéed in olive oil until lightly browned, seasoned with sea salt, sprinkled with chopped dill from Willow Wisp Farm
• the wine was a Spanish (Rueda) white, Naia D.O. Rueda 2014, from Verdejo old vines
• the music was Q2 Music, streaming