The Sous Chef

After a few long weeks at work, I retreated to my parents house for a nice relaxing mini-vacation with the kids. We had steamed crabs and corn from the veggie stand, went to the local dairy for ice cream and spent time at the beach enjoying the salt air and sound of the surf. For the last night, I thought I'd cook dinner for everyone. I picked out "Baked Cod wrapped in Bacon with Rosemary" (pg. 256) and Mexican-Style Corn (pg. 227.) After a late afternoon trip to the beach, Grandma played with the kids outside and I started dinner. My dad loves to cook. As I've mentioned, I didn't help much in the kitchen growing up and now that I have my own family I make frequent calls home with cooking emergencies. Dad is often on the other end of the call helping me make a pot roast or some other recipe that I'm craving. He very excitedly asked if he could be my sous chef for the night and we got going on the chopping and cutting. They didn't have cod at the store so we used halibut which worked great as a replacement. First, we chopped up our rosemary on the cutting board, added olive oil, salt and pepper and rolled the fish around in it coating it in the mixture. In the meantime, we preheated the oven and searched for the perfect pan. I always change my mind at least three times on what pan/pot/baking dish I'm going to use (dirtying way more than necessary) and this night was no different. My dad seemed to have the same trouble so maybe that's where I get it from. We finally settled on a broiler pan and after wrapping the coated halibut in bacon and putting one last stem of rosemary on top, we stuck it in the oven. The fish just needed 10 minutes and the corn was ready by the time the fish was done. It looked great, just like the picture. We carefully placed it on everyone's plate and rolled the corn around in butter and some grated parmesan cheese for our Mexican corn and put that on their plates too. I think my dad got a huge kick out of being MY helper for once. It was lots of fun!
Recipes cooked: 42
Recipes left: 131
Days left: 240