July 8, 2015 Swedish style baked cod with vegetables,mashed potatoes and Bechamel Sauce

 July 8,2015  Swedish style baked cod, vegetables, and mashed potatoes

We ate ham and cheese sandwiches and sliced tomato sandwiches for lunch. 

Yesterday,I went to Talin to buy fish.  Let me tell you how I buy fish from my favorite fishmonger who I have known for 25 years.  I walk up to the counter, take a quick look to see if there is anything interesting,and if not, simply ask, “What would you recommend?.”, which is what I did.

His response was, “Ling cod, very fresh.”

Game, set, match. Without further discussion, I said,”I will take a 1 pound piece.

He held up his thumb and finger about 1 inch apart to show me the estimated thickness of 1 lb. of the cod and I said, “make that a 1 ½ lb. piece.” 

He then cleaned off the front gill and boney section and cut me an about 2 inch thick slice out of the back of the stomach, perfect.

I wanted to make a dish with mashed potatoes and using the ling cod.  My favorite is a casserole of Duchess potatoes and sole from my Swedish cookbook but I looked in Pol Martin’s Canadian cookbook for a cod recipe and found one I liked using almost the same ingredients but without mushrooms and with a cream sauce after boiling all the ingredients.  Suzette then suggested sautéing and then  poaching the ingredients in a skillet, which sounded great.  I peeped the ingredients, peeling and dicing four potatoes and putting them on medium high heat to boil.

I then peeled and diced four carrot from our garden. I sliced four mushrooms.  We then picked a handful of young celery stalks, leaves included, from the garden and a small handful of fresh dill stalks and I chopped them along with 2/3 of a medium red onion.  

Suzette sautéed the vegetables in butter and made mashed potatoes with butter and some salt, while I filleted the 1 1/2lb. slice of fresh ling cod (true cod). 

After the vegetables had sautéed for a few minutes, Suzette added white wine and water to make a poaching medium and we added the filleted cod and covered the skillet. 

In another four or five minutes I flipped the fish to submerge the other side of the over 1 inch thick fillet and poached it and the vegetables for another four minutes.

We then made a white (béchamel) sauce with 2 1/2 Tbsp. of butter and2 Tbsp. of flour cooked for 2 minutes to make roux and then we added ¼ cup of milk. Then we strained about 1 ½ cups of the poaching medium into the roux and stirred it with a wooden spoon until it started to thicken, at which point Suzette turned off the heat and allowed it to cook slowly.  

Suzette got Pyrex baking dish slightly smaller than our ceramic one out and I smeared the bottom and sides with butter.  She then put a layer of potatoes on the bottom and then lay the vegetables, fresh dill,and fish, broken into its large flakes, some sauce and some grated mozzarella.

Then Suzette molded the rest of the potatoes as  the top layer and poured the rest of the sauce on, making room for it by poking holes along the sides of the baking dish to allow it to run down onto the sides of the dish.  I then sprinkled grated mozzarella cheese on top of the sauce and the dashes of smoked paprika for color and a bit of flavor.

We baked the casserole in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes, until the whole casserole was bubbling.  Suzette wanted a cranberry relish but all we had was a Christmas Preserves from Stonewall Farms with cranberries as one of its ingredients.  It went quite nicely with the dish, rather like Swedish lingonberry preserves.

We chilled a bottle of Santiago Station Sauvignon Blanc ($4.49 at Total Wine) and poured glasses of it for dinner.  I must admit that I did not enjoy this wine with this meal.  It seemed very one dimensional without much flavor or character.  I might have liked a big citrusy New Zealand.or Vouvray better.

After dinner we watched the origins of modern life series on PBS, but we both fell asleep during the program.  I guess looking at scientists explain the anatomy of early Homo sapiens from an examination of their skeletal remains no longer fascinates me the way it used to, especially after the show explained that we are all the result of the inter-breeding of Homo Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.  

Suzette’s take was clever and seemed to sum up the thrust of evolution, when she said, “Evolution  is just a lot of sex.”

After a few spoonfuls of clafoutis, I went to bed.

Bon Appetit