A recipe for summer cod

Inspired by "the fish guy."

I had a feeling about this one, and that feeling was right. We were not a Rachael Ray household (I have a vague memory of us being entirely the opposite, but that could just be our general culture’s overall sentiment towards her) but I guess that didn’t stop my dad from cribbing this recipe for cod from her. He was a big fan of “the fish guy” at the TriBeCa farmer’s market, and so summers were marked with whatever that dude was selling, which makes me think this was likely brought in to the repertoire because whatever was on offer that week was cod.

There are several good-looking fish recipes in the cookbook, but perhaps I fear making them because I’m worried the quality of the fish I’ll be getting will not live up to my memory of the fish guy’s, so I won’t be doing the recipe justice. My beautiful mind! Anyway, cod isn’t exactly complicated, so I asked Jackson to pick some up. Later that night, I got to work.

I started this one off with a mix of herbs—some dill and chives, because I had those, and definitely more than required. (I also discovered that there were moths in my cabinet that had infested our chickpea flour. Disgusting! Into the trash that went!) Many of the commenters on the original recipe suggest using Panko instead of bread crumbs; we had the breadcrumbs, so I went with that. The fillets were larger than I had anticipated, which was good, because we had a dinner drop in, and thankfully enough to feed her. After I prepped the breadcrumbs, I ended up making another panzanella based on Marian’s great recipe, which used up a ton of our garden vegetables. I also added cucumber, cooked kale, eggplant and feta instead of mozzarella or burrata.

Then I returned to the fish. I was concerned the top wasn’t crispy enough (as commenter Jennifer H. was as well) once it came out, but I don’t trust our broiler, and the interior of the fish was clearly cooked just right. As, again, the many commenters pointed out, it was definitely not the most flavorful—cod is on the subtler side of flavors, the Panko would have helped, etc—but with the hearty, my own-farmer’s-market panzanella, it all worked out.

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