Cooking with Mr. Latte pg 281-283: Slow Roasted Cod with Romesco Sauce

Living with several great restaurants within walking distance of our house is both a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side, we have ridiculously easy access to delicious food within minutes. On the curse side, we have ridiculously easy access to delicious food without having to cook at home.

Don't get me wrong, I love to cook. And I'd be happy to do it more often. But we have yet to settle into a weeknight routine for dinner-- part of it is that we both have to travel at random times, part of it is that we go out with friends a fair amount, so it isn't often that we eat at home more then 2 nights in a row. But part of it is that I'm still trying to build out a "repertoire", as Amanda calls it, of great dishes I can make often without getting sick of them.

Despite having cooked scads of dishes over the years, so far I've only got a handful that have made it into syndication in our household. Spicy taco salad, the Zuni cafe roast chicken that Jer introduced me to, sauted shrimp on spinach salad, grilled Asian flank steak are definite repeats in our household. But I haven't found a fish dish yet that I truly love. The challenge is that for a dish to qualify as a repertoire dish, it needs to make my picky, "has to be spicy", protein-loving, loves to go out to eat, husband happy.

The man grew up going out to eat almost every night of the week-- to him, that is the default option. We are working on that, as eating at home is SO much healthier and cost effective, not to mention we need to amortize our recent kitchen remodel. But for a dish to convince him to stay home, dinner has to have lots of protein, have lots of flavor, and be relatively quick to make. And vegetables have to be hidden in the dish, hidden by a foil of spicy flavorful something.

When I saw this Roasted Cod and Romesco Sauce dish, it leapt out at me-- we could have a winner here. And with tomatoes coming into season, I think it could be the perfect summer time dinner dish. I just hope it (and my execution of it) lives up to its potential.

The recipes are from Chapter 33, when Amanda and Tad throw their own engagement party-- so this recipe could clearly work well for entertaining. I think I'm going to try it for a weeknight dinner though, by making the sauce over the weekend, and roasting the fish the night of, and see what happens. If the sauce is as good as it sounds, the extra sounds wonderful with asparagus spears, or simply spread on some toasted bread.

Pg 281 Slow Roasted Cod for a Large Party (summarized into recipe format)
1/2 lb. of Cod per person

1. Coat a roasting pan with a thick slick of olive oil
2. Season the fish all over with sea salt and lay the pieces about an inch apart in the pan (fold the thin parts under to try and make them semi-even with thick parts)
3. Sprinkle with more olive oil and place the fish in a 250 degree oven. Should take 30 minutes for cod, less for a thinner fish. She recommends basting it now and then with the oil from the pan so it doesn't dry out.

Pg 282 Romesco Sauce
5 ripe baseball-sized tomatoes, cored and halved
8 large cloves garlic
olive oil (preferably from Arbequina olives)
Sea salt
1/3 cup blanched almonds
10 blanched hazelnuts
1 dried ancho chile pepper (soaked in very hot tap water for 20 minutes)
2 fire-roasted piquillo peppers
aged sherry vinegar
red wine (preferably from priorato or rioja)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lay the tomatoes cut-side up in a medium roasting pan. Place the garlic cloves near the middle. Sprinkle olive oil over the tomatoes and garlic. Season with salt. Roast for 15 minutes, the reduce the heat to 350 degrees and continue roasting another 60-75 minutes, rotating the pan once or twice. The garlic should be soft after 20 minutes; remove from the oven and let cool. Remove the tomatoes from the oven
2. Meanwhile, coat the bottom of a small saute pan with 1/9 inch live oil. Place over medium heat. When the oil shimmers, add the almonds and hazelnuts and cook until toasted a golden brown, about 2 minutes. Stir as they cook. Remove the nuts from the oil with a slotted spoon and cool on paper towels.
3. Split open the ancho chile and carefully remove the seeds; discard. Using a small knife, scrape the thin layer of flesh from the skin. Add this pulp, along with the tomatoes, nuts and piquillo peppers to the bowl of a food processor. Squeeze the garlic from its skin and add it too. Pulse a few times to blend and grind the mixture a little, then leave the processor on, pouring olive oil through the feed tube in a thin stream. The sauce should become thick and creamy like a mayonnaise. About 1 cup of oil should be enough. To sharpen it up, season with salt and add a tablespoon or two of vinegar and red wine.

note: she recommends www.tienda.com for the Arbequina olive oil and fire-roasted piquillo peppers... I'm pretty happy with the olive oil I buy from my little specialty market, and think they have the piquillo peppers there too, but in case yours doesn't looks like a pretty neat site.