Thursday, March 31, 2011

Bacalao a la catalana


It's been a month since my last post :( To be honest I haven't been cooking much lately. We sort of switched to salads for some time so there wasn't anything worth posting anyways.

Tonight I felt like healthy food but a bit more complicated than just a salad. I remembered that I had a cod fillet in the fridge. On the other hand a couple of weeks ago I bought a Spanish cooking book, so I thought I might as well try something from there. I always buy cooking books with pictures. When you see how the result looks your motivation to cook something new is doubled! Well this time my eye stopped on a cod fillet with spinach which looked pretty amazing. Luckily I had spinach in the freezer. According to the recipe I was supposed to used fresh but even with the frozen one it was still delicious!

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup black raisins
1/3 cup pine nuts
2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
10 cups fresh spinach leaves, roughly chopped
4 cod fillets
freshly ground nutmeg
salt and ground black pepper to taste
some lemon juice

1. Soak the raisins in hot water for 15-20 minutes.
2. Roast the pine nuts in a heavy pan over high heat until golden.
3. Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the garlic and fry for few minutes. Remove and discard.
4. Add the spinach to the oil. Do not add extra water, the spinach has enough juices. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes. The spinach will decrease in volume. Remove the lid, add the drained raisins and pine nuts, season to taste and cook until the liquids evaporate.
5. Meanwhile place the cod in an ovenproof dish, brush with some olive oil, season with salt pepper and nutmeg and place in the oven for about 15 minutes. Once the fish is almost cooked through turn on the broiler and continue cooking until the fish is gold brown. Drizzle the fish with freshly squeezed lemon juice and serve along with the spinach.