A recipe for cod that was supposed to be halibut

And a childhood yearning.

Another one for the Cod Chronicles, which is what I thought to call this recipe as I was preparing it with cod instead of halibut, because that is yet again what the store had. It appears to have been adapted from a user-submitted recipe on Food.com, and though the topping is described as a vinaigrette, it feels a little too chunky to be accurately labeled that. Suffice it to say, I’ve certainly had this type of topping on many varietals of meat and fish before—it’s like a puttanesca—and it’s always good.

The only thing I did differently here is the pieces of cod were quite large, so I had to put two in a glass baking dish, and one on a metal sheet pan. In case you didn’t know, metal heats up more quickly than glass, and my metal pan was shallower than my glass one, which was kind of a fun science experiment to witness: the fish in the glass dish took longer to cook, and poached more, resulting in more juice after the fact, while the fish on the sheet pan was browned more with less liquid. I served them all together, and while this would have been, I think, better with halibut (more flavorful) it was yet again, refreshing and bright. A bit too much juice—cod can release a lot of water—and I also topped it with parsley, which I recommend (or any similar herb).

Let’s pretend this is artfully blurry okay

Speaking of fish, my family’s long time neighbor from the Fish Market, Barbara Mensch, has a new book out, which it was written up in The New Yorker, among other places. It’s called A Falling-Off Place: The Transformation of Lower Manhattan, and features the photographs she’s taken of change downtown for 40 years. From what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s arresting—though of course, it would be for me. This, for instance, is right next to my childhood home a few years before I was born.

menschphoto

A post shared by @menschphoto

I have dabbled with the idea of writing more about growing up in such a specific place during such a specific time, but I’m of the belief that in order to write effectively about something you need to have some emotional distance from it, and, judging by the pang just looking at these photos brings for me, I have yet to fully get there. (In Mensch’s appearance at on WNYC’s All Of It, host Allison Stewart reads a text from a listener who says, "I lived on Front Street next to Brooklyn Bridge from '96 to 2001. There was a restaurant called Radio Mexico. On Tuesday nights, the bar was filled with seamen singing old sailor songs. It was great. It was being in a different world.” Just reading that filled me what I can only describe as akin to yearning.) But it does make me happy Mensch has taken them, and that they’re getting the recognition they deserve: a picture is worth etc etc etc you know the rest.

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