Weeknight Dinner: Cod with Fennel and Tomato

I'll be right up front about it: I like Rachael Ray. Especially after seeing her chefography and learning more about how she made it to where she is, I give nothing but props to the woman. But it seems that the food world is divided about whether to love her or hate her for her success. Talk about schadenfreude! She's never claimed to be any more than she is: a talented home cook who found her success on television, not unlike Paula Deen and Ina Garten. (I have one friend for whom I've vowed to surprise him with one of her dinners because he finds her dishes and her show so wholly unappetizing.) Her Betty Rubble giggle can be annoying, her dishes take anyone but her longer than 30 minutes to prepare, and her "desserts" leave more than a bit to be desired. But I like perky and she's got it. Plus she obviously has an army of people working with her now to keep coming up with more and more recipes to fill her books, magazines, and TV shows. Her food style quotient has definitely increased to being well beyond the queen of burgers!


But I owe her real props for teaching me how to make delicious cod, a food with which I have a love-hate relationship: my partner loves it, and I hate it. Actually hate is too strong a word, but let's just say that when I'm doing the shopping, cod is not on the list, though I'm a huge fan of cooking and eating almost every other kind of fish and seafood. My partner, proud New Englander and Connecticut Yankee that he is, loves the stuff, even when I overcook it, which until recently was 90% of the time. I had resigned myself to admitting that "In cooking as in life, one should play to one's strengths," to paraphrase Nigella when she appeared on Oprah a couple of years back. The corollary to that is to then not play to one's weaknesses, so I was perfectly happy to be a cook who can't make a good piece of cod. Really tilapia, flounder, and halibut were perfectly interchangeable in the category of white fish as far as I was concerned, tilapia and halibut being my favorites.

Of course quality of ingredients is the first step to cooking success so we spent a bit of coin for cod at Whole Paycheck one evening, believing that it wasn't me but the fish from the Giant grocery store upending our fish dinners. So not wanting to make a dinner that was both mediocre and expensive, I sought new recipes and have found three by Ms. Ray that finally produced more than satisfactory--I even daresay delicious --results. Maybe it's because she grew up on Cape Cod in her early years, but the woman can cook her fish! The first recipe was oven roasted cod crusted with herbs, which produced the crisp exterior and moist fish that I'd been wanting for years. The second was last night's dinner, cod poached in the oven with fennel and tomato. And Rachael's third notable dish is a bit fancy but also delicous: cod with burst grape tomatoes, parsley-mint pesto broth and roast fingerling potato crisps. Each of these recipes was dee-lish, producing tender and flaky cod that wasn't rubbery in the least.


So here is my take on Ms. Ray's oven poached cod, which she calls by a slightly different name (I didn't have any dill). I'm pleased to present this recipe because after serving it to my partner in November, I decided what I really needed to do was to start blogging about some of the recipes I like to make, as I mentioned in my first ever Ganbaru blog. Incidentally, I'm very particular about time and temperature when cooking cod. I make sure that my oven is hot enough using my oven thermometer and I use a timer to follow the cooking time to the second to reduce the risk of over cooking.

Cod with Fennel, Dill and Tomato, by Rachael Ray

4 (8-ounce) portions cod fish
2 wedges lemon
Salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 2 turns of the pan
1 bulb fennel, quartered, core cut away, thinly sliced
1 small to medium yellow skinned onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken broth
1 (15- ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
Black pepper
A few large sprigs, in tact, plus 2 tablespoons chopped dill [I substituted chopped fresh marjoram with tasty results; thyme would probably be another good subsitute]

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Rinse fish and squeeze lemon juice over it. Season the fish with a little salt and reserve.

Heat a large oven proof pan over medium heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil, fennel and onion and season with salt. Saute fennel and onions 7 to 8 minutes then add white wine and reduce a minute, then add broth. Add tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Set fish into pan and spoon juices over the cod. Add a few sprigs dill [or another fresh herb of choice] to the broth and set the pan into the hot oven to cook. Cook 12 minutes, until fish is opaque. To serve, arrange cod on plate, top with vegetables and chopped fresh herbs for garnish.

Happy New Year: Rachael Ray's Cauliflower Soup

So we're back from Lake Placid after a whirlwind of holiday gatherings, skiing, and a last ditch New Year's party that really rocked to ring in 2008! I can't believe that I know people who have a complete dance floor and DJ setup in their basement! After ten days on the road, needless to say there was really no food in the fridge except a few onions and an anemic looking head of cauliflower. In fact "dinner" on New Year's Eve after a nine hour drive home from Lake Placid and before heading out to a party (yes, that would be after the nine hour drive) was a Freschetta frozen spinach and mushroom pizza which really wasn't bad actually.

But today, New Year's Day I was back in my own kitchen--not exactly well rested as I'm an inveterate early riser regardless of when I go to bed at 3:00 a.m.-- with my own utensils feeling eager to whip something up and I remembered Rachael Ray's cauliflower soup. A quick perusal of the recipe and the only ingredients missing were celery and milk, both of which I consider optional in this instance actually. This is a soup I love to make with cauliflower from the farmers market usually. I swear when you smell the cauliflower being sauteed you'll think you discovered some new vegetable, such is the difference between the farmers market produce and what is sold at the grocery store. In fact making this soup the first time with a huge head of cauliflower from the framers market, I fell in love with cauliflower as though I was tasting it for the first time. The soup was immediately incorporated into my Thanksgiving menu as an appetizer folks could serve themselves while waiting for the main event.

Seeing as I also had some leftover white wine, I used it in place of the milk to deglaze the pan before adding the chicken stock (which I make every couple of months and have on hand as concentrated frozen cubes in the freezer). I wish I'd had a bigger head of cauliflower because after we served ourselves for lunch there were just about two cups of the soup left, which is half as much as I usually freeze whenever I make soup from scratch so that the next time the fridge is empty I can just defrost a homemade soup from the freezer. Anyway, here is Rachael's soup with my embellishments:

Cauliflower Soup, by Rachael Ray

• Coarse salt and coarse black pepper
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons butter (or use EVOO)
• 2 small heads cauliflower, or 1 large, cut into small bunches of florets (Don't worry about the florets, just core the cauliflower head and chop it up into a rough 3/4 inch dice)
  3 ribs celery and leafy tops from the heart of stalk, finely chopped (optional as far as I'm concerned)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves (I'm too lazy to strip leaves off thyme when making a dish like soup, so I just tied the sprigs together and tossed them into the soup. most of th leaves will fall of the sprigs and then you just remove the bundle before pureeing)
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 quart vegetable stock (I used chicken stock)
• ¾ cup white wine (my addition)
• 1 cup half-and-half or whole milk (optional, IMHO)
• Hot sauce, optional (I cut up a fresh jalapeno and sauteed it with the veggies)
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves or chives, for garnish (any chopped fresh herbs such as chives, thyme, oregano can be used as a garnish in any dish really)
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan, for passing at the table, optional (I didn't add any cheese)
• sour cream (my option as a garnish, a tablespoon of which I stirred into the hot soup to add creaminess)

In a large pot, heat up the olive oil and/or 2 tablespoons of the butter, over medium heat. Add the cauliflower and stir with a wooden spoon. Add celery, onion (jalapeno if using) and thyme and cook for 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Push the vegetables to 1 side of the pot. Melt 1 more tablespoon of butter in an empty area of the pot and add flour to the butter. Cook for 1 minute, stirring the flour in the butter. Deglaze the pan with the white wine scraping up the delicious brown caramelized bits on the bottom of the pot. Mix in chicken broth (and half-and-half if using). Bring up to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Puree soup using an immersion blender, food processor or blender and return to pot. Rachael likes to leave it a little chunky. Check seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary.

Garnish soup as desired with chopped herbs, sour cream, or grated cheese. Enjoy!

Ruminations and Beginnings: Why THIS blog about food...

So it occurred to me of late that I spend way too much time thinking about food! Actually it was more than a few months back, but I stand guilty as charged and here is the evidence:

• Is it normal to look forward to the weekend because I know that I'll have the chance to hit not one but two farmers markets within walking distance of my home (one on Saturday, the other on Sunday)?


• Is it normal to use aforementioned trips to the farmers market as a mood enhancer?


• How about when I'm bored at work and I start scribbling down what's at home in the fridge and deciding how I might like to prepare it tonight or sometime this week?


• One time on a bike trip in Holland with people I'd only just met, I confessed one night over beers that, "In my heart, I think I may be a French woman." (I'd given that book French Women Don't Get Fat to my sister for her birthday and after reading it myself, I realized that I actually have the cooking/eating/lifestyle philosophy of a French woman!)

This because I care entirely too much about sourcing good food and finding worthwhile recipes that I can try at home. So, after my partner said to me last night that the cod dish I'd prepared from one of Rachael Ray's recipes was better than any restaurant meal he could have hoped for, I decided that I need to write down my feelings about preparing food from the recipes that I encounter. (So now you know that I watch the Food Network--not surprising, I'm sure--and that I don't disdain Ms. Ray--whom so many in the food blogosphere dismiss out of hand.)

The purpose of this blog will just be about my experiences in everyday cooking of other people's recipes. I'm certainly not opposed to creating my own recipes and generally feel confident in doing so. But I'm just not one of those people who proudly claims, "Oh, I never follow a recipe!" I generally enjoy following and comparing others' recipes to learn about flavor combinations and techniques. When comfortable and confident I will certainly embellish as I see fit. Sometimes I'll follow a recipe to the letter (usually the first time out), but I'm certainly not opposed to substituting based on what I have on hand and making something my own if I get the gist of the recipe right off the bat.

So, what will follow will be my musings on preparing food for family and friends. I hope you'll join me on occasion and share your own impressions.

So many recipes, so little time!

Sean

Ganbatte!