Cod Bobotie - Fish Is The Dish!

One of the first things I said to the team behind Fish is The Dish was that I didn't have the confidence to cook different fish dishes. I knew how to make oven baked fish and I knew how to make fish pie and that was all I made. I didn't have the confidence to buy fresh fish, I didn't have the confidence to buy different types of  fish and I might have filleted a whole Salmon once but it certainly wasn't a skill I was ready to add to my Food CV. Once in Scotland and given a master class in preparing fish, selecting fish, the different types of fish and winning the fish filleting competition between the bloggers at the event I had more confidence but I was still waiting for that break through that meant I had confidence with cooking fish.

This week we had Cod Bobotie. It's an egg based dish and so because of Daddy's recently discovered allergy to eggs it was just for Top Ender, Big Boy and I. I was stuck with what to make for Daddy and was considering making him something non-fish related when suddenly I thought why? I can cook fish, I know how to cook fish I can cook fish for him so that we can all share a meal together. And so after jumping on to the Fish is the dish website for some tips on when the fish would be cooked I served the children and I Cod Bobotie and Daddy got some dry pan fried Cod. I think that was my break through moment.

For some reason the Cod Bobotie that I cooked didn't work out all that well and there was a lot of moisture underneath the solid top part of the dish. I think after having made it again that this moisture the first time was a combination of needing to be cooked longer, the fish being quite moist and my general crapness at cooking something new. When I made it again I drew the moisture out of the fish by placing the fish onto a piece of folded kitchen roll and just baked it a little higher and a little longer. It tasted great but as the children didn't like it and Daddy can't eat it I probably won't be making it again.

The good thing that I got from this is that I can cook fish, that I can comfortably decide to make an alternative fish dish and as the fish comes in individual portions it's not that hard to make something different for everyone... not that I'm planning on doing that too often!