“You look like a soaking cod to me” was a way of mocking others and also denoted how common cod was in Rome for a lean Friday supper. One of the most vivid memories of my childhood was the grocery store under my house, which had cod on display in a basin with flush running water every Friday morning, all year long.
The Roman recipes for cod are many but, for some reason, no Roman cod recipe is known outside the city walls.
This baked version is one of the less common.
Baked cod Monticiana style
- Preparation time: 60 minutes
- Ingredients for 4 servings
- Difficulty: Easy recipe
- Ingredients
- 1lb. 5 oz (600 grams) of desalted and skinless cod fillets
- 4 large potatoes
- 14 oz (400 grams) of ripe tomatoes
- 1 clove of garlic
- Extra virgin olive oil to taste
- Chopped parsley to taste
- Instructions
- Boil the potatoes for about forty minutes. Drain and let them cool. Cut them into large slices.
- In another pot with boiling water, cook the previously-washed tomatoes for one minute. Drain them and put them in ice water. Remove the skin and divide them in half by depriving them of seeds and internal filaments. Cut them into fillets.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Rinse the slices of cod, dry them well with kitchen paper, and cut them into medium-large pieces.
- In a pan with oil and a clove of garlic, cook the pieces of cod for a few minutes. Remove them from the heat and put the chopped tomatoes and chopped parsley in the pan. Cook the sauce over high heat for about ten minutes.
- Put the potatoes at the bottom of a greased baking pan, then the cod, and finally the tomato sauce.
- Bake in the oven for about thirty minutes.
Tips to ensure the success of the dish:
- In winter I use high-quality peeled tomatoes.
- Desalting is a long process. By now everyone sells cod already desalted but, if you don’t know the supplier, make sure it has been prepared well. To desalt cod, it must be soaked in fresh water for three days, often changing the water or flushing it with running water.
- The timing of cooking in the oven is indicative