White fish can sometimes seem a little boring - much as I love it, when cooked at home I think fish like cod and plaice needs a flavoured sauce, or a coating, or herbs - something to liven it up really. These cod gratins aren't the most healthy, as they do use cheese and cream, but they are perfect for a dinner party. You could make one big dish but I like these individual portions.
The recipe is inspired by one for individual cod gratins from Leith's Easy Dinner Parties. To serve two, you need:
2 pieces cod fillet
20g butter
1 leek, sliced
80ml dry white wine
150ml fish stock
50ml double cream
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
2 tsp chopped parsley or dill
70g grated cheddar
Preheat oven to 180C. Put the wine and stock in a small pan and bring to the boil and simmer until reduced by half. Add the cream and mustard and remove from the heat.
Cut the fish into cubes. In another pan, melt the butter and sweat the sliced leeks for a few minutes then mix the fish, leeks and creamy sauce in individual gratin dishes.
Sprinkle the cheese over the top and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
I served these with crushed potatoes - parboil some new potatoes and crush with the back of a fork so they still retain their shape but are squashed and split open. Spray with Fry Light or drizzle with oil and bake in the oven for about half an hour.
The potatoes went really well with the finished cod gratins, which tasted delicious. I'm not normally a fan of leeks but these were lovely.
As leeks are in season, I'm sending this to Simple and In Season, hosted by Ren Behan.
The theme for this month's Four Seasons Food is "something fishy", so I'm sending this to Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.
I rarely buy fresh fish because of the cost but I think I might try this with chunks of tinned salmon. It might not be as good as your fresh version but this sounds so nice I want to try it out somehow and it will be perfect on one of these lovely days we are having at the moment =)
ReplyDeleteYou could use frozen cod or other white fish fillets as well (defrosted obviously), as those tend to be cheaper.
Deletesounds good to me.
ReplyDeleteSounds delicious Caroline, a much lighter than usual gratin (which I love but they're probably very naughty!) and nice to see lovely leeks in there. I love your recipe for crushed then baked new potatoes. I've not come across this method before, lovely! Thanks so much for linking up to this month's Four Seasons Food #SomethingFishy event.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your entry into Simple and in Season - a round up has gone live today!
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