Baked fish with potatoes and gremolata

25th Nov was Cook For Family Day, an event that I had the privilege of organising following a Cook For Family initiative started off earlier by Daniel of Daniel Food Diary.

For Cook For Family Day, I decided to try out a recipe that I saw in an earlier issue of Delicious magazine that I borrowed from my sister-in-law. It is simple and fuss free, as with most one-pot oven meals. Toss everything in and walla! A tasty meal awaits you and your family. If you have a larger family, simply increase the amounts of the recipe below accordingly. Like some spice, add some red chilli slices during the final baking step!

My family and I enjoyed the fish and vegetables very much. The baked fish was moist and tender and the gremolata added alot of flavour. Do not omit it!

Try out this simple recipe when you have the time. It is definitely worth it.

Baked fish with potatoes and gremolata

Serves 4
Prep time 20 minutes
Cook time 45 minutes
Total time 1 hours, 5 minutes
Allergy Fish
Meal type Main Dish
Misc Child Friendly, Serve Hot
From magazine Delicious

Ingredients

Baked Fish

  • 500g Potato (peeled and thinly sliced)
  • 1 onion (thinly sliced)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 20g unsalted butter
  • 250g Cherry Tomatoes
  • 100g breadcrumbs
  • 700g Halibut fillets (3 - 4 pieces, depending on size)
  • 1 lemon

Gremolata

  • 1/4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves Garlic (finely chopped)
  • 1 Lemon's zest (Grated)
  • 1 bunch English parsley (finely chopped)

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Step 2
Spread potatoes and onions in a large roasting pan and drizzle with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Season with salt and ground pepper, then toss to coat.
Step 3
Spread it out to cover the base of the pan and dot with butter. Bake for 15 minutes.
Step 4
Add tomatoes, and return to the oven for 10 - 15 more minutes.
Step 5
Meanwhile, mix breadcrumbs with remaining 1 tbsp of olive oil and season with salt and ground pepper. Season the fish fillets with salt and pepper as well.
Step 6
Remove roasting pan from oven and place fish over potatoes. Cover with breadcrumbs and lemon slices and return to the oven for 12 - 15 more minutes.
Step 7
In a small bowl, combine extra virgin olive oil, garlic, parsley and lemon zest. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Step 8
When fish is ready, remove from oven. Serve hot with gremolata.

Foil baked butter cod with mushrooms

Mid week Wednesday seems to come by so quickly. Instead of the usual eating out on weekdays (since we’re both too tired to cook), I thought that I’d fix something “simple”. Home cooked food is always healthier anyway. We decided on something Japanese, seeing that we had some japanese ingredients that we hadn’t yet used up. Hubby had been craving for cod since last week and so I figured why not? We can simply merge the two ideas together: Japanese and cod. I didn’t have a recipe for this, but I vaguely remember eating something similar at Ichiban Boshi once, and so I decided to experiment.  The result?

Serves 2

Ingredients:
2 pieces of cod fish  (or buy a piece of cod steak and halve it)
2 Handfuls of Japanese mushrooms (Shimeiji, Bunashimeiji, nametaki etc)
Half a carrot, cut into chunks and partially boiled
2 tbsp of butter (room temperature)
1 tbsp mirin
salt and ground black pepper

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 220°C.
  2. Cut two large pieces of aluminium foil and fold them into half. Lightly grease the centre of the foil with oil. Make a well in each piece.
  3. Season the cod with salt and pepper.
  4. Place cod in the centre of foil. Add mirin and top cod with a tablespoon of butter.
  5. Add mushrooms and carrots and wrap up parcel. When wrapping parcel, remember to leave some room for the parcel to expand.
  6. Place foil parcels on a baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on size of fish)
  7. Serve hot with rice.

PS: The soup seen in the second picture is a simple dashi stock with added vegetables and tofu. The dashi stock was made from scratch by soaking kombu in water for 1.5 hours, then heating the water with kombu till it just boils. Remove kombu and add 1/2 cup of bonito flakes. Turn off the flame. After some time, strain the soup. Season to taste.