Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Cod Baked in a Yogurt Sauce


It has taken me several weeks to get off high center about I Heart Cooking Clubs' selection for chef and cookbook author being highlighted for the next 6 months.  Quite frankly I am not a big fan of Indian cuisine.  Chalk that up to eating a lot of really bad Indian food in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  Some has been disgusting and other, though it may taste OK, has been extremely visually unappealing. 

But....if I really want to learn something about Indian cooking Madhur Jaffrey is the one person I would want to learn from; like gravitating to Marcella Hazan for Italian, Rick Bayless for Mexican or Julia Child for French.

So, off the couch I come to cook outside my normal realm of comfort.  This week's theme is yogurt and I selected a fish dish baked in a yogurt sauce; a recipe from Indian Cooking.

Everything was easily combined in a baking dish, covered and baked.


sliced onions


fish - I used cod instead of the suggested haddock.  Halibut was another suggestion that would work here.



Topped off with a yogurt sauce flavored with ginger, cumin and coriander.  The sauce was a little bland but only due to the fact that I left out the cayenne and garam masala (which is a blend of cardamom seeds, cinnamon stick, cumin seeds, cloves, peppercorns and nutmeg).

The fish turned out delightfully light and healthy.  We served it with brown rice and sliced tomatoes.  The recipe halved well and surprised me as being the first Indian food that I actually liked.  Lovey was too!  But I didn't tell him what I was making him until he ate it.
Let's go see what they have for us to do next week (now that I have my feet wet).


Cod Baked in a Yogurt Sauce or Dahi wali macchi
Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (as Haddock Baked in a Yogurt Sauce)
Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:
2 medium onion, peeled
2 pounds (900 g) 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick fresh cod fillets (or haddock or halibut)
2 cups (450 ml) plain yogurt
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp sugar
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
2 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp garam masala
1/2  to 3/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp peeled, finely grated fresh ginger
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 Tbsp unsalted cold butter, cut into pieces


Mise en place:
  • rinse and dry fish fillets; cut the fillets into 3 inch (7.5 cm) pieces and set aside to dry
  • slice onions 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick slices and line a large baking dish with them.
  • place the dried, cut fillets onto the onions in a single layer
  • pour yogurt into small mixing bowl
  • squeeze lemon juice and grate the ginger and add to yogurt
  • measure out the spices and add to yogurt
  • measure vegetable oil and add to yogurt mixture
  • cut cold butter in small pieces and hold in the refrigerator until ready to use
Method:
Preheat the oven to 350°F /190°C
With a whisk mix the yogurt mixture and pour over the fish, making sure some of the sauce goes under the pieces of fish.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake in the upper third of the oven for 30 minutes or until the fish is just done.

Remove fish to a plate and keep covered in warm oven.  Meanwhile, pour all of the liquids from the baking dish into a small saucepan.  It will seem very thin and separated.  Bring the sauce to a boil and boil rapidly until there is about 1-1/2 cups (350 ml) of the sauce left, about 5 minutes  Take the saucepan off the heat.  Put in the cold butter and beat in with a fork or small whisk.  As soon as it has melted, pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

NOTE:  you may also serve the dish cold, after it has been refrigerated overnight, with a green salad.

I'm sharing this post at IHCC - go on over and see if there's anything you like

7 comments:

  1. I'm glad that the fish works for you, even though without the garam masala and cayenne! I love cod, but they are extremely expensive over here. Looking forward to more of your cooking journey with MJ!

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  2. We have a fishing trip coming up and I'm marking this to make with any fish we catch. Looks good!

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  3. The garam masala would have definitely brought out the Indian flavors. Have to find some cod.

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  4. I'm glad you gave Indian food a try! It is popular here in Southern Ontario, there is a large Indian and South Asian population in the Greater Toronto Area.

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  5. So pleased you dipped your toe in the water with Madhur Jaffrey, and hope you will develop a love affair with Indian food. This fish dish looks wonderful - I would definitely like to try that.

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  6. It seems like an unnecessary step to pour the yogurt sauce from the already baked fish dish into a sauce pan and reheat just to add the butter. Why not just heat up the yogurt sauce prior to baking, add butter and then pour it over the fish and bake? Then when the fish is done, plate it and pour the baked yogurt sauce over the fish? Voila! It's done. Also by having to put the already baked fish back in the oven while you're adding the butter to the hot yogurt sauce on the stove top, is cooking the fish even more than the 30 minutes, which in my opinion is an awfully long time to be baking cod to begin with. Even when you turn the oven off it's still incredibly hot and it would continue to cook the COD.

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  7. This came out really good. Next time though I will use full fat yogurt. It didn't say to use full fat so I used 2% which was what I had in my fridge, but it curdled when adding the butter to the boiling yogurt. But the flavor was there. I did add 2 tsps of sugar as other recipes similar to this list as an ingredient. In fact Madhur Jaffrey lists 1 tsp of sugar into the sauce in his origianl recipe.

    I used sunflower oil instead of vegetable oil which can be inflammatory.
    I did not cut my fish up into pieces. I left them whole. Tomorrow I will try this recipe with chicken. Sauce is so good.

    I didn't pour the cooked sauce into a sauce pan, melt butter and pour it over the fish, after baking for 30 minutes. I boiled the yogurt sauce prior to baking and then poured it over the fish and baked for 15 mins at 400 degrees F.

    Interestingly enough, there are many of this same recipes that follow these steps on the Internet, some also saute the onions before layering the baking dish. However, the original creator of this dish, Madhur Jaffrey, did not saute the onions and he did not heat up the sauce from the baked dish after baking either. He threw the pieces of butter into the baking dish once it was removed from the oven and just let it melt over and then served, although he did request to finely slice the haddock as well.

    Thanks for sharing. Can't wait to have some more tonight. I had a Greek salad with it and a 1/2 a cup of rice pilaf. Sooooo gooood.

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