Served with a loaf of crusty country bread, this is one of our very favourite preparations for cooking cod. The recipe is from the lovely cookbook “ My Kitchen in Rome,” written by Rachel Roddy who lives in Rome but was originally from England. The recipe calls for pine nuts but as the Italian/Mediterranean pine nuts are quite expensive here I tend to substitute slivered almonds but if you got some by all means! I find pine nuts from China have an odd and disagreeable taste so neither use them or suggest you use them.
Makes 4 Servings
1 ¾ lbs. fresh cod fillet (cut into 4 pieces)
1 large onion
One 14 ½ oz. tin Italian plum tomatoes
4 Tbsp. EVO
1/3 cup either regular raisins or golden raisins
1/3 cup pine nuts or slivered almonds
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Thinly slice the onion. Put the tomatoes in a medium bowl and chop them up.
Heat the EVO in a deep saute pan over medium-low heat, add the onion cooking gently until softened. Add the raisins, pine nuts or almonds followed by the tomatoes. Half cover the pan and leave it bubbling/simmering gently for 25 minutes. If the sauce seems to be getting too thick, add a bit of water. Taste and season lightly with salt andpepper. Keep sauce on simmer while you prepare the fish.
Heat up some EVO on medium heat in a pan large enough to accommodate all of the fish at one time. Season the fish with a little salt and pepper and fry lightly, approximately 2 minutes per side, then add to the hot tomato-onion sauce, spooning sauce over the fish, raise the heat up to medium-low, cooking the fish until it’s just cooked through. Depending on the thickness of the fish it usually takes about 10 minutes per inch to cook fish so the fish should take approximately an additional 6 minutes to cook once in the sauce.
