Miso cod with pickled ginger stem

January and February are fabulously good months for cod.

I absolutely love fish, but with this particular breed I have a somewhat love/hate relationship. I have cooked cod dishes on a number of occasions with varied and mostly disappointing results. My main problem has been getting the succulent little blighters to take on any flavour at all. In the main, dishes that promised mouthfuls with fresh yet distinctive characteristics have proved flat and uninspiring.

Cod, it would appear, is not like the loyal, no-nonsense, un-changing salmon. You know what you’re getting with salmon!

Now, these failures may have something to do with the sub-standard level of my cooking abilities but I would have expected at least a couple of knock-out dishes. And then I discovered miso cod…

I can remember eating this dish on a couple of occasions – as a special order in a back-street London sushi restaurant where the cod was gelatinous, watery and lacking in anything resembling flavour, and in Zuma in Hong Kong where the experience was like a troupe of angels tap-dancing delicately on my taste buds. It was beautiful. I had to have more.

Miso cod proved to be the only way to beat this fishy nemesis – learn to cook a recipe I knew had the desired outcome… and stick to it!

This Sunday a couple of people are coming over for supper and this dish will be making its first public appearance from my kitchen. I’m away for most of the weekend but this recipe is perfect, not only because of its seasonal nature but also because the cod ideally needs 24-48 hours to marinade – I can do minimal prep and bung it in the fridge for a day or two until I need it.



Ingredients

- 4 x 250g cod fillets (this dish also works extremely well with a good quality fillet of salmon)
- 225g white miso paste
- 100ml cooking sake
- 160ml mirin
- 175g granulated sugar
- 1 stalk hajikami (pickled ginger stem)

In a heavy based, medium saucepan combine the cooking sake and mirin and bring to the boil. Boil for 20-30 seconds to burn off the alcohol then reduce to a medium heat.

Add the white miso paste and stir until completely dissolved. Turn up the heat, add the sugar and stir. Once the sugar has completely dissolved remove the pan from the heat and leave the marinade to cool completely at room temperature.

Once cooled, in a separate bowl drench the cod fillets with the miso mixture until all of the white meat is covered. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge at least overnight but preferably for 48 hours.

When ready to cook the cod pre-heat your grill to high and your oven to 200⁰C/Gas 6.
Remove all excess marinade from the fillets and place on a baking tray. Grill the fillet until brown and then bake in the oven for a further 15 minutes.

Garnish with hajikami (which you can buy from some supermarkets and Asian grocers). Eat with chopsticks (also available from Asian grocers)!

Making your own miso cod can be a somewhat personal experience so play around with the quantities of sake, mirin and sugar to find the flavour balance you like best.