Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Stinky Cod Challenge


I'm getting accustomed to life in Elma now.  I wake up when the rooster crows (not really since all of our chickens are adolescents and we don't know their genders yet), and I'm in the outdoors by 8:30 in the morning.  I keep busy by weeding, feeding the chickens, planting flowers, collecting wood, shoveling loads of horse poop compost, and making dishes with moss and ferns to name a few things.  

I've taken on the chore of cooking on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  For the most part it has been fun. Today I was given a challenge.  

"Can you do something with this stinky cod?"

Okay...  So I decided to make a spicy Japanese style curry stew and it came out really nice.  

Around lunch time I started by marinating the stinky cod in some milk, curry powder, tons of black pepper, and surprisingly Louisiana Hot Sauce.  

Around 5ish, I browned the non stinky cod and chopped up the rest of my ingredients: Onions, Celery, Carrots, Red Pepper, Potatoes, Parsley:
All of these ingredients were sauteed in the same pan that I browned the fish in.  I covered the veges with stock and cheated by adding the Japanese curry rue. 

After all the veges stewed in the curry, I added the non stinky cod to finish cooking for about 10 minutes until serving time.  I waited to add the cod 'til the end to keep it from breaking up too much.

The curry was accompanied with rice cooked with cardamon, peppercorn, zambe currant raisins, cloves, parsley and turmeric


The curry came out very spicy but delicious... I think I could have done without the Louisiana Hot Sauce, and I think my use of black pepper was a little excessive.  My goal was to get the stink out of the fish, and I succeeded.  I wish I had a glass of sweet Lassi but out in Elma such luxuries are hard to come by... actually I just didn't think to make it.

bon apetit!