The Swedish Chef Diaries -- Oven baked "lightly" salted cod

Anyone who knows us for 5 minutes knows that Jon is the one in charge of the kitchen.  He is the chef in the household and without his enthusiasm to try new recipes, I would be eating an alternating rotation of rice and butter and spaghetti day in and day out.  Jon was working late one night and I was left with the agonizing decision of eating a handful of Calvin's Cheerios or trying my hand at a new Swedish recipe that Jon had lined up that night.  Sighing, I reluctantly put down the cereal box and picked up the casserole dish.  Might as well give it a try.

I'm not a fan of fish but I can bring myself to eat it if it doesn't taste too fishy.  You know what I mean.  Dress it up like something else and my brain can pretend its not fish long enough to swallow it.  Living in Stockholm, surrounded by SEA, I've tried to overcome this culinary reflex.  Imagine my surprise when I see the menu for the night is brined cod.  So... I'm going to deliberately make my fish super salty and briny and really really fishy?? Ummm...ok...

The recipe also features a shrimp salad thingy to put over top your super salty brine-y fish.  (MUST HAVE MORE IODINE!) Unfortunately, the recipe was more vague than I wanted since I really needed my hand held.  The recipe itself gets a D- since it deceivingly says its "lightly" salted (its not),  serves 10 people (who feeds 10 people?) AND doesn't give any sort of total cooking time reference (1 hr, 2 hrs? I need to know how long I'm going to be in the kitchen!!)  I had to cut the recipe in half and it took about an hour.

I had to come up with a creative side item and since we were low on extra ingredients around the house, I grabbed some carrots, apples, olive oil and lemon juice and made a cold, raw salad thingy on the side.  The tastiest part of the whole dish was the shrimp, boiled eggs and brown butter topping.  You could easily just make that part of the recipe and serve it on crackers or some tasty bread and save yourself an hour.

Here is a picture of my plate -- not quite the same as the one on the blog but we ate real food that night and didn't have to order in pizza.  A pathetic success.

Jon -- shrimp topping - 4
          brined cod - 2
Lisa -- shrimp topping - 3
           brined cod - 1.5 -- barely edible

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/2011/08/23/oven-baked-lightly-salted-cod/

The Swedish Chef Diaries – Cod on Bacon with Mushroom and Potato Puree

After a week without and seafood, I decided to dive back in with a FANCY lookin dish that caught my eye on the official Sweden blog. This one sounded / looked complicated, but was actually pretty simple. Its basically easy mashed potatoes, easy baked fish and a somewhat complicated sauce. By “somewhat complicated”, I mean you sauté bacon, onions and mushrooms then put in some stock and red wine. Let that simmer for 20 minutes and BAMMO, taste explosion.

I added some sautéed spinach to it to get a little green in there, but all in all it was very simple to put together. The picture on the blog looked well put together, so I insisted that I bring out the plates put together, rather than the usual “family style” we normally do.

Overall, I think this might be our big winner so far. Fancy enough to look impressive, but simple enough to pull together quickly / easily. And tasty – that’s the important part obviously

Jon – 5 BORKS

Lisa – 5 BORKS

DOUBLE 5!!!!! FIRST PERFECT SCORE !!!!!

http://blogs.sweden.se/food/2012/01/12/cod-on-bacon-with-mushrooms-and-potato-puree/