Serves 2 | 30 minutes | Difficulty: Easy.

According to the Catholic traditions, meat represents the body of Christ crucified, and eating meat during Lent and Easter was considered gross, unrespectful and even a sin. However, Spaniards have always loved eating well, and they soon developed many recipes that turned humble ingredients into gorgeous meals. Nowadays the traditions have lessened, but Eastern recipes stay at the Spanish homes.

This week we are introducing a recipe from “Directo al Paladar”, one of the most popular Cook Blogs in Spain, and definitely one of my favourites.

  • 250 g cod. You can use fresh or frozen cod, or even salted cod, previously desalted for a more authentic Spanish taste
  • 1 big spring onion
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1/2 small red pepper
  • 1/2 small green pepper
  • 4 tbs chopped tomato
  • A splash of cooking white wine
  • 8-10 prawns or king prawns
  • A pinch of ground nutmeg
  • 2 strings of saffron
  • Black pepper
  • Salt
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • A bit of parsley for decoration

Preparation

Carefully dry the cod with a paper towel and cut into bitesize pieces and set it apart. Finely chop the spring onion and a garlic clove. Remove the pepper seeds and chop it into small pieces.

Warm up some tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan and stirfry the spring onions. Add the chopped garlic clove and peppers and fry everything for about 10 minutes. Add the tomato and let it cook for a couple of minutes. Add the wine and the spices: nutmeg, saffron, pepper and a pinch of salt. Cook it on low fire for about 10 minutes. If the sauce reduces too much, add some water or stock (fish or vegetable stock).

Add to the saucepan the peeled king prawns and let them cook for 5 minutes or a bit longer if they are frozen. Then add the pieces of cod, soaking them well with the sauce. Put a lid on and let them cook on low fire for 10 minutes, or until the fish is ready. Serve with a bit of fresh chopped parsley or tarragon.

Serving

You can serve the cod with saffron and prawns in small terracotta dishes as a tapa, so it will serve more people, or as a main course with some mash or baked potatoes on the side. With a Mediterranean salad or a vegetable cream as a starter, you will have a healthy and well-balanced menu. Change the extra virgin olive oil for olive oil spray and you will have a  Slimming World meal with zero syns.

The original recipe was published first on the Spanish blog Directo al Paladar.

Wine pairing

If you cooked this recipe with salted cod,

According to Mar de Cadiz, Xarel-lo and Macabeo wines would make a good pairing with this cod cooked on a seafood sauce, as our Dahlia Organic white and the gorgeous Cygnus Organic Brut Nature Cava, and personally, I´m all for pairing Cava with savoury foods instead of leaving it only for the sweet.

If you used fresh or frozen cod for this recipe, the blog un buen vino suggests you could also pair it with Ribeiro, Verdejo or Txacoli, and if you cooked with salted cod you could go for Garnacha roseé. If you are a red wine person, you can also pair your salted cod with a young red Tempranillo, but this time better avoid robles and reservas.

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