Cod with sausage and shellfish. Quick. Easy. Dinner

I’m doing something very similar to this tomorrow night for some friends. Where I’m going to vary it, is to give it a Moroccan twist with the addition of some fresh Merquez lamb sausage and some preserved lemon slices.

I’ll prep the cod steaks and have the bread crumbs at the ready with the oven preheated.

Just before the cod goes into the oven, I’ll start to pan saute the lamb sausage with some sliced sweet onions in some extra virgin olive oil and minced garlic. When that’s beginning to get happy, with a splash of white wine, I’ll put the cod into the oven.

Then I’m going to add the shellfish, the sliced preserved Moroccan lemons and a rich tomato broth made with seafood stock. The chef uses chicken stock which is also good, but I want a really deep oceanside taste going on. Knowing me as I do - and why shouldn’t I? - I’ll probably be tempted to toss in some sort of vegetable like chunks of zucchini and some dark olives to the mix. Probably a anchovy fillet or two as well to deepen the flavor components.

The plating and presentation will be the same.

We’ll have a green salad with fresh oranges and almonds - in my light, homemade viniagarette dressing to start, along with some freshly baked multigrain popovers. Accompanying the main dish will be some escalloped potatoes. The fish dish will be pretty rich, so pairing it with something very simple like the potatoes is key.

To finish, a twelve whole grain Meyer lemon cake with a lemon glaze and Peet’s coffee (of course!).

Wild cod baked in artichoke lemon garlic sauce

Having scored at Costco on a lovely package of wild, fresh cod fillets, company coming over last night for dinner seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out an idea about an artichoke based sauce that I’d been noodling around for a while. The fact that one of my guests is a Celiac (gluten intolerant) made it just bit more of a challenge in that I had to eliminate any gluten containing ingredients. This left me doing it all from scratch essentially.

The result was simply outstanding, or as Natacha said “tres magnifique!”.

I made this sauce in the food processor, and simply started adding the following ingredients to the processor bowl:

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