Recipe number 6.

Heyheyhey. Long time no see. Long time no cook. It’s been a hectic month or so. I’ve been on holiday, settling back into uni with more patients than ever, and new years resolutions and that kind of thing taking my time. Rest assured all will return to normal soon. I just need to get my life back together, which is happening slowly but surely.

So what’s happened in the meantime? Well, I’ve skipped a few recipes, largely the desert recipes and a few that would have cost way too much - I’m looking at you lamb shanks. Why no deserts? What’s wrong with you Moose? I’m on a cut, and only 1kg away now from making weight for my taekwondo competition, so need to be cautious. Don’t worry, I’ll make ‘em soon and get fat.

The recipe is the first one in the seafood section of the course and I have mixed feelings. The only fish I ever really cook is salmon, salmon is love, salmon is life. So cod was entirely new to me really - at least when it comes to cooking. I don’t know what it was, it might have been the bad fish (Birmingham is landlocked, fresh fish is difficult to come by, especially midweek) or I overcooked the fish who knows. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t bad. I ate it happily for four days or so, but there’s only so much parmesan I can eat, jeeez. I actually had headaches from it all.

Onto the recipe itself.

Getting most of everything for this recipe was as simple as a large trip to Aldi and a small trip to Sainsbury’s.

Maybe Aldi frozen cod was the downfall. I’ll actually go to a fishmonger’s next time and buy something proper. Everything else though was very easy to get a hold of. For the breadcrumbs I used some dilapidated weight watchers bread that I got for 10p. 51 calories per slice.

Wanna know why it’s only 51 calories per slice? It’s freaking see through when you hold it up to the light. My god. Other than that, there was nothing special about this recipe - compared to the wack things I’m having to buy soon. Send help.

Prep and cooking

This largely went well and smoothly. But you know what let me down? My inability to read. So, I threw all the parmesan into the crumb mixture, and got hideously confused when the instructions tell me to crumble the rest of the mixture over the fish. This thing was not crumbling. Even if my life depended on it, it wouldn’t have crumbled.

Thinking about it, a lot of my issues were with the crumb mixture. I have one of those weak immersion blender mini food processors, and it just couldn’t cope with everything. It tried, bless it.

Once the crumb was made and out the way everything else was relatively simple to be honest. Put the crumb on the fish, cool the fish, throw on the remaining parmesan (don’t forget this step, like I did), whack it in the oven. Bam. Fish done.

The sauce couldn’t get any more basic either. Boil fish stock, throw in creme fraiche and simmer until reduced. Done.

Before

After

Taste

Taste is where I had issue. With a ton of parmesan on the fish, the salty fish-stock and then seasoning on top, the whole thing ended up headachingly salty - not sea-water salty, more just a bit too much it was annoying. My fish ended up tougher than I would have liked too, and I fully take responsibility for that - it happens when you skimp out.

The first two days where a struggle, but by the third day it tasted fine. Not sure whether it was because I had to finish a load of the sauce, so the sauce masked the fish or what, but by that point it was decent enough.

Overall, salty and tough, to put it succintly.

Verdict

Will I be making this again? Probably not, at least not in the near future at all. I just didn’t particularly enjoy making it or eating it to be frankly honest. The book calls this a “fuss-free supper dish [that] is very quick to make”. I have to disagree - two hours in the kitchen and I was bored.

The taste didn’t spark anything in me. Nothing made me scream out - I WANT MORE. Time and effort was just not worth it in the end. I hate to be this negative but with it being the first bad recipe in the book, I’m hoping its the last.