My parents really faced a cooking challenge when me and my sisters were growing up. I’ve never really liked the taste and structure of meat, I just didn’t eat the meat and took what else we had. I remember that we used to eat chicken filled with boursin (garlic and herbs cheese) and that I really liked this, but I only ate the sauce, so much that there was nothing left for the others. Which I thought was fair because I didn’t ate the chicken, so it was a fair trade. My mom was so fed up about it that she decided not to cook any more meat for me. That turned out to be a really smart choice and one of my sisters actually wanted that as well. So suddenly we had two ladies in the house who didn’t eat meat but only fish. My other sister felt a bit left behind and didn’t like that we didn’t have to eat meat but that she still needed to eat fish. She decided that from now on she was a fish-vegetarian. As of that moment, cooking was one big party with all the different dishes.
People often tell me that they feel it’s difficult to prepare fish or that they don’t really know what to do with it. Since I don’t eat meat, I specialized myself in creating dishes with fish. I like the diversity of fish, you can actually do a lot with it and I love it in all different ways; fish stews, packages from the oven or just baked fish. I’ll share all these recipes with you on my blog.
Last week my sisters joined us for dinner and luckily my fish-vegetarian sister decided to eat fish again. I made the recipe below a couple of weeks ago for the first time, but it’s already turning out to be one of my favorites. So I decided to make it and it was a success. Unfortunately I forgot to make a picture of the empty plates.
Ingredients for 4 pers.:
- 4 pieces of cod (apprx. 150gr per piece)
- cherry tomatoes (with the green attached)
- 3 tablespoons basil pesto
- 200 gr flour for pasta dough
- 2 eggs
- 250 ml cooking cream
- 2 limes
- 200 ml white wine
- 500 ml fish broth
- 500 ml fish broth
- 2 spring onions
- 1/2 red chili pepper
- salt and pepper
How to prepare it:
For this dish I will make my own fresh pasta with my pasta machine, but you can also use dried or fresh pasta (ready to cook) from the store. I’ll make notes in the recipe so you know when to cook the pasta. You can use the instructions on the package on how to cook the pasta.
In the situation that you are making your own pasta dough, this is what you start with: take 200 grams of flour (you can buy specially prepared flour for pasta in the stores, I would advise to use that) and mix that in your food processor with 2 eggs and a bit of salt. Once the dough is nicely sticking together, role it up to a small ball and put it aside in your fridge for about 10 minutes. Cover the dough with a cloth so that it stays dry. Put a pan with water on the stove. If you are not making your own pasta, you can also put some water on the stove already.
Chop the chili pepper very small and put it aside. Chop the spring onions in equal, small rings.
Now you can start with the pasta, so put some flour on your countertop. Roll out the pasta (use a clean area in your kitchen where you have enough space), once your pasta is thin enough you start pulling it through the pasta machine, I always do this like 3 times before getting it into the shape I want it. For this dish I always make fettuccine, so once it’s thin enough, I’ll take it through the fettuccine shaper. Now you put it on your dry rack (or you can use a piece of rope, as long as it can dry) and repeat this for all other dough pieces as well.
If you are using dried pasta, you can put it in the boiling water now.
Put the tomatoes in a baking dish, sprinkle some olive oil and sea salt on top of them. They need to be grilled in the oven for about 10 min. Once the grill is hot, put the tomatoes in the oven.
Put a frying pan, with a thick bottom on the stove to poach the fish. Add 150 ml wine (don’t forget to fill up your own glass ;)) and the fish broth and heat up the pan. Once the broth is boiling, carefully add the fish. Make sure that the fish is completely covered with the broth. Make sure that the water is not boiling but remains hot. The fish needs to poach for about 8 minutes.
Now you can add a decent amount of salt and some olive oil to the boiling water for the pasta. Add your pasta. The pasta only needs to boil for about 5 minutes.
It’s time to make the sauce! Put a wok or frying pan on the stove. Add some olive oil and once the oil is hot, add the chili peppers and the spring onions. Fry them for about 2 minutes. Add 50 ml of wine and have this boil down. After 3 minutes you can add the pesto and the lime juice. Stir everything well and add the cooking cream. Have the sauce simmer for a couple of minutes.
Your tomatoes, cod and pasta should be ready by now. Take the tomatoes out of the oven and put them aside for a moment. Drain down the cod as well as the pasta. Add the pasta to the sauce, stir the pasta through the sauce until it’s well covered with it. Garnish the pasta on your plate. Put a piece of cod on every plate and garnish with the tomatoes, a small lime slice and some fresh pepper.
Enjoy!
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