Cooking Black Cod
Recently for a special occasion I had a go at recreating some aspects of a meal we had a few years ago: miso-marinated black cod, and spicy charred cabbage. Overall, I think I would recommend it as an achievable (but hopefully impressive-looking and tasty) dish to cook, but requiring some very expensive ingredients.
Unfortunately, I’m not a fantastic cook myself — perhaps this is one reason that I enjoy restaurants and takeaway so much. I chose this meal to attempt partly because looking at the recipe it didn’t seem to require too much complicated cooking. The recipe I used can be seen at the internet archive. It originally comes from kitchn, and like many recipe sites they seem to have included a longform essay before 3 lines of actual recipe. But no matter, it’s there if you wish to try yourself.
Black cod is actually a different type of fish, not referring to having been blackened as I had thought when I first enjoyed this dish in a restaurant. It is a white fish with a delicious rich buttery flavour. In this dish it’s actually prepared quite simply. We make a marinade out of white miso mixed with mirin & sake (I actually used non-alcoholic red wine as it was all we had), and then put the fish in it a couple of days in advance. Then when it’s time to cook we fry in the pan either side for a few minutes to get the nice looking blackened bits, and then bake in the oven for a further few minutes to get it well cooked throughout.
My biggest error in cooking the fish was in this first frying stage - I think I had the pan a little too hot, and there was a bit more blackening than I had imagined.
When we originally ate the dish I was trying to emulate it was in a pop-up restaurant-within-restaurant called “Black Cod & Wagyu” within Zelman meats. My favourite side dish we had with it was a chargrilled hispi cabbage which was served with quite a spicy sauce. I tried to emulate this with a normal cabbage (grocery shopping is still not always easy) and an oven, and although I don’t think it’s super close to the original it was very tasty. Baking the cabbage gave it a very nice texture (and the layers opened up a bit to make it less dense), and with the spicy tomato sauce I mixed it was very tasty.
Overall, I think I would recommendcooking this dish at home for special occasions. Getting the black cod was by far the largest expense — the portion pictured cost approximately £20 so I spent £40 on the fish alone for myself and my partner. Mirin and miso paste are also not necessarily cheap to get. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had spent £60 overall on ingredients for this meal - you may be able to get them cheaper yourself. However the recipe definitely worked well to allow us to enjoy the taste and hopefully quality of these ingredients.