046/18 – Za’atar Cod with Relish:
I love Za’atar but had never actually eaten it until I was in Jordan, the first taste blew me away and I have been a big fan ever since. Having cooked some nice fish dishes lately I was keen to do another, Za’atar Cod with Relish sounded perfect!
The recipe is from Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour – It’s a great book, lots of nice recipes in there:
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The last cook with Za’atar was Mana’eesh on the Uuni, lovely!
The Ingredients:
Still haven’t seen Za’atar around much, I got 1kg from Amazon for less than 500g but it’s more expensive now. £17.99 for 1kg. The Cod was from our local fishmonger and everything else was from the supermarket.
The Prep:
I mixed Za’atar with rapeseed oil to create a paste then rubbed it all over the cod with a bit of Maldon sea salt. This was covered with clingfilm and put in the fridge for a few hours.
I also made the relish by chopping Kalamata olives, preserved lemons, pickled chillies, coriander and rapeseed oil. The relish in the book has some red chillies in but mine were green so I added some chopped Thai birds eye chillies to lift the colour a bit.
The Charcoal:
Still burning my way through the Kamado Joe Big Block charcoal. I have some Oxford Charcoal Ash lumpwood which would have been ideal for this but I couldn’t face emptying the fire basket so relit the Big Block! As before, both vents fully open, lid up and left for half an hour then lid down and vents to 1/4 open with the temperature hovering around 200c.
The Cook:
I was going to cook the fish directly over the grill, not cooked a lot of fish this way so was worried about it sticking but with the oil in the rub I felt it would have been fine. The recipe says to use a pan which reminded me! When I bought my Big Joe I got the cast iron reversible griddle with it. Time to use it for the first time!
I gave the griddle a good 10 minutes to warm up, even touched it to check it was hot (won’t do that again!)
The fish started sizzling as soon as they hit the griddle.
The book says to do 8 minutes skin side down then flip it and cook for another 3-4 minutes. I flipped them after 8 minutes, lovely colour. I used my burger flipper to turn the fish.
Time to Plate Up:
After another 3 minutes of cooking I took the fish off the grill. It looked and smelt fantastic!
Love this photo, I just wanted to eat the fish whilst I was taking this shot!
It really did smell fantastic, I was looking forward to eating it.
Whilst I was cooking my wife roasted some potato cubes and made a roasted veg side dish from courgette, aubergine, chorizo and thyme.
The relish was placed on top of the fish.
View from above:
Summary:
This was a lovely dish, really enjoyed it. The cod was very fresh and had a great taste complimented by the za’atar. Pretty easy to prep and cook but another great fish dish I will cook more often.
| Cook Difficulty: | 2/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Quick: 2/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Kamado Joe |
| Cook Method: | Direct / Griddle |
| Charcoal: | KJ Big Block |
| Smoking Wood: | N/A |
| Cook temperature: | Unknown |
| Cook time: | 11 minutes |
| Internal temperature: | Unknown |
| Notes: | Nothing really to change. |
THE BOOK:
If you like the look of this recipe you can buy the book below.
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