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Estimated Preparation Time: 20 minutes Estimated Cooking Time:
25 minutes
Servings: 4 persons
Non-standard Cooking Utensils: None.
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Ingredients:
2 large cod fillets
3oz butter
1 medium onion sliced
Tea cup of fish or vegetable stock
1 level teaspoon curry powder (or to taste)
150ml / ¼ pint double cream
Salt and pepper to taste
2oz butter and 2oz flour for the Roux (see picture and instructions
below)
How to Make Roux
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Roux is a mix of 50 / 50 butter and flour which will thicken
the gravy in the casserole dish. It can be used to thicken all
sorts of sauces as well. Melt the butter on a medium heat in a
pan, then whisk (or vigorously fork in) the flour. Cook for 2
minutes whisking all the time to prevent it sticking to the bottom
of the pan. |
Cooking Method
1. Make the Roux as described above.
2. Flake the fish into a frying pan, add the butter and onions and
cook on a medium heat until light brown (approximately 8 minutes).
3. Add the stock and roux, mixing well and cook on a low heat for 10
minutes.
4. Add the curry powder, salt and pepper and cream, and bring to the
boil. Immediately it starts to boil, remove the pan from the heat and
serve with rice.
THE COD
TO CHOOSE COD —The cod should be chosen for the table when it is plump
and round near the tail, when the hollow behind the head is deep, and
when the sides are undulated as if they were ribbed. The glutinous parts
about the head lose their delicate flavour, after the fish has been
twenty-four hours out of the water. The great point by which the cod
should be judged is the firmness of its flesh; and, although the cod is
not firm when it is alive, its quality may be arrived at by pressing the
finger into the flesh. If this rises immediately, the fish is good; if
not, it is stale. Another sign of its goodness is, if the fish, when it
is cut, exhibits a bronze appearance, like the silver side of a round of
beef. When this is the case, the flesh will be firm when cooked.
Stiffness in a cod, or in any other fish, is a sure sign of freshness,
though not always of quality. Sometimes, codfish, though exhibiting signs
of rough usage, will eat much better than those with red gills, so
strongly recommended by many cookery-books. This appearance is generally
caused by the fish having been knocked about at sea, in the well-boats,
in which they are conveyed from the fishing-grounds to market.
PRESERVING COD —Immediately as the cod are caught, their heads are cut
off. They are then opened, cleaned, and salted, when they are stowed away
in the hold of the vessel, in beds of five or six yards square, head to
tail, with a layer of salt to each layer of fish. When they have lain in
this state three or four days, in order that the water may drain from
them, they are shifted into a different part of the vessel, and again
salted. Here they remain till the vessel is loaded, when they are
sometimes cut into thick pieces and packed in barrels for the greater
convenience of carriage.
CODFISH - Cod may be boiled whole; but a large head and shoulders are
quite sufficient for a dish, and contain all that is usually helped,
because, when the thick part is done, the tail is insipid and overdone.
The latter, cut in slices, makes a very good dish for frying; or it may
be salted down and served with egg sauce and parsnips. Cod, when boiled
quite fresh, is watery; salting a little, renders it firmer.
THE COD TRIBE.—The Jugular, characterized by bony gills, and ventral fins
before the pectoral ones, commences the second of the Linnaean orders of
fishes, and is a numerous tribe, inhabiting only the depths of the ocean,
and seldom visiting the fresh waters. They have a smooth head, and the
gill membrane has seven rays. The body is oblong, and covered with
deciduous scales. The fins are all inclosed in skin, whilst their rays
are unarmed. The ventral fins are slender, and terminate in a point.
Their habits are gregarious, and they feed on smaller fish and other
marine animals.
THE HABITAT OF THE COD —This fish is found only in the seas of the
northern parts of the world, between the latitudes of 45° and 66°. Its
great rendezvous are the sandbanks of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Cape
Breton, and New England. These places are its favourite resorts; for
there it is able to obtain great quantities of worms, a food peculiarly
grateful to it. Another cause of its attachment to these places has been
said to be on account of the vicinity to the Polar seas, where it returns
to spawn. Few are taken north of Iceland, and the shoals never reach so
far south as the Straits of Gibraltar. Many are taken on the coasts of
Norway, in the Baltic, and off the Orkneys, which, prior to the discovery
of Newfoundland, formed one of the principal fisheries. The London market
is supplied by those taken between the Dogger Bank, the Well Bank, and
Cromer, on the east coast of England.
THE FECUNDITY OF THE COD —In our preceding remarks on the natural
history of fishes, we have spoken of the amazing fruitfulness of this
fish; but in this we see one more instance of the wise provision which
Nature has made for supplying the wants of man. So extensive has been the
consumption of this fish, that it is surprising that it has not long ago
become extinct; which would certainly have been the case, had it not been
for its wonderful powers of reproduction. “So early as 1368,” says Dr.
Cloquet, “the inhabitants of Amsterdam had dispatched fishermen to the
coast of Sweden; and in the first quarter of 1792, from the ports of
France only, 210 vessels went out to the cod-fisheries. Every year,
however, upwards of 10,000 vessels, of all nations, are employed in this
trade, and bring into the commercial world more than 40,000,000 of salted
and dried cod. If we add to this immense number, the havoc made among the
legions of cod by the larger scaly tribes of the great deep, and take
into account the destruction to which the young are exposed by sea-fowls
and other inhabitants of the seas, besides the myriads of their eggs
destroyed by accident, it becomes a miracle to find that such mighty
multitudes of them are still in existence, and ready to continue the
exhaustless supply. Yet it ceases to excite our wonder when we remember
that the female can every year give birth to more than 9,000,000 at a
time.”
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