Baked Cod Oriental Style

One weekend, we were too busy lazing and around with the kids that by the time we got ourselves into gear and went to the market, most of the fish had been sold. There was however some Cod available. Now Cod is rather expensive in this part of the world but sometimes its nice to indulge.


The Lovely Wife absolutely adores Cod as do the kids. In fact, when the kids were just starting to eat solid food, we used to feed them a little mashed Cod as it is believed that Cod is good Brain food. And all along I thought it was my Genes…

So with the purchase of Cod, I now had to decide what make. I don’t have a lot of experience in cooking fish but I am slowly learning to enjoy cooking it. My favourite method has to be experimenting with throwing a whole lot of seasoning together with the fish, wrapping it in foil and then baking it. Not only is this relatively easy, it is also very healthy. The best part though is that you get to enjoy the flavour of the fish itself without having it doused in too much spice or seasoning.

The Lovely Wife was just happy to have fresh fish rather than the Frozen Dory Fish that I usually like to make. The fact that it was Cod was an added bonus of course!

In trying to figure out what to do, I remembered, that in recent times, Chinese Restaurants have started to serve Steamed Cod doused in soy sauce and ginger. I decided to follow a similar route but use just a tinge of soy sauce. I also thought I would add some mushrooms to the fish.

This is what I did.

450g Cod Fish, cut into steaks
4 cloves garlic – chopped
½ inch ginger – chopped
200 g swiss brown mushrooms - quartered
2 tbsp Sesame Oil
1 tbsp light soy sauce (or more to taste)
Black Pepper

Method
Heat Sesame Oil and fry garlic and mushrooms. Set aside. Mix together ginger and soy sauce. Rub the fish with the mix. Arrange the fish steaks in a pan lined with foil. Make sure there is enough foil to cover the fish and form a package.
Mix the the remaining ginger and soy sauce with the garlic mushrooms and spread over fish. Sprinkle with Black Pepper. Fold the foil over to make a package, folding over the edges to seal. Bake in a preheated 200C oven for about 20 mins.


Part of the fun in baking in foil is serving it as it is on a platter and then opening up the package to reveal the goodness inside!



The cod turned out very nice baked like this. The flesh was firm and juicy with just enough sauce created by the fish oils and juices from the mushrooms. Very tasty indeed! The kids couldn't get enough of the Cod while the Lovely Wife gave it full marks. Looks like I'm getting the hang of cooking fish...!