Blue Eyed Cod with Carrot Puree and Sauce Vierge

I cook a lot of fish, and blue eye cod is the one I keep coming back to. It is a meaty white fish that holds its shape under heat, takes seasoning beautifully, and forgives you if your timing slips by thirty seconds. Steam it gently and you get clean flakes that pull apart with a fork. That is exactly what we want here.

This plate is built on three parts that each do a job. The cod brings the protein and the structure. A smooth carrot puree gives you sweetness and body underneath. Then the sauce vierge sits on top, raw and sharp, full of tomato, lemon and fresh herbs. Put them together and the dish reads light but tastes like you fussed over it for hours. You did not. That is the trick.

I learned this style of cooking by stripping things back rather than piling them on. No heavy cream sauces, no flour-thickened gravies. The flavour comes from good produce treated simply, and a little technique in the right places. If you can boil a carrot and dice a tomato, you can plate this at home and have people think you trained somewhere fancy.

One thing before you start. Read the whole method through once, get your vegetables prepped, and make the puree and the sauce vierge before the fish goes near any heat. Steamed cod waits for no one, so you want everything else ready to go on the plate the moment it is done. A clear bench and a few small bowls of prepped ingredients will save you more grief than any fancy bit of kit ever will.

Ingredients

For the fish and sides

• 4 x 150 gram fillets of steamed blue eye cod
• 3 x medium potatoes cut into quarters, seasoned and baked
• 12 x spears of asparagus, lightly steamed
• Carrot puree (see recipe below)
• Sauce vierge (see recipe below)

Chef’s tip: use chicken instead of fish as a non-seafood option.

For the sauce vierge

• 5 Roma tomatoes, diced (flesh only, no seeds)
• 1/4 cup finely diced eschalots
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 1/4 cup fine herbs (parsley, dill, chives, mint etc.)
• 10 green olives (seed removed, flesh diced)
• 5 tomatoes (roasted and blended)
• Salt and pepper to taste

For the carrot puree

• 500g of peeled, roughly chopped carrot
• 5 diced eschalots
• 6 cloves of roasted garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Sauce vierge

1. Dice tomatoes, eschalot and mix together in bowl.
2. Mix in lemon zest and juice.
3. Add the fresh chopped herb mix and diced olives.
4. Stir through the blended roast tomatoes.
5. Season to taste with salt and pepper and lemon juice if needed.

Carrot puree

1. Boil all ingredients in a pot, just covered with vegetable stock, until soft.
2. Remove from stove, place in a blender and blend until smooth.
3. Season lightly and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Bringing it together

1. Make the carrot puree and sauce vierge first, so they are ready before the fish cooks.
2. Quarter, season and bake the potatoes until golden and tender.
3. Lightly steam the asparagus until just bright and still with a little bite.
4. Steam the blue eye cod fillets gently until the flesh turns opaque and flakes when you press it.
5. Spoon a swipe of warm carrot puree onto each plate, sit the cod on top with the potato and asparagus alongside, then spoon the sauce vierge generously over the fish.

Serves 4.

Getting the most out of this plate

The whole dish lives or dies on how you cook the cod. Steam over a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil, and pull it the second the flesh goes opaque and flakes under light pressure. Carry-over heat keeps cooking it on the plate, so a touch early beats a minute late. Dry fish is a sad thing and there is no rescuing it.

Get your knife work right on the sauce vierge too. Seed the tomatoes so it does not go watery, and dice everything to a similar small size so each spoonful is even. I like to make it a little ahead so the lemon and herbs have time to settle into the tomato, though I have been known to sneak a spoonful straight from the bowl before it hits the plate. The roasted blended tomato is what gives it that deeper savoury hum, so do not skip it.

This is genuinely good everyday eating. White fish is a lean source of protein, and the carrot, tomato and fresh herbs bring plenty of colour and fibre to the plate without any heavy sauces. The carrot puree is a quietly useful thing to have in the fridge as well. It keeps for a few days, warms through in minutes, and works under all sorts of grilled fish or chicken when you want a soft, sweet base on the plate. If you want to read more on building balanced meals at home, Nutrition Australia has plenty of sensible, practical guidance worth a look. For a fish dinner like this, a crisp dry white or a glass of sparkling water with lemon both sit nicely against the citrus in the sauce.

If you enjoy cooking fish this way, have a go at our poached salmon with fennel or the snapper with aromatic lemongrass and coconut sauce next. For crisp, golden results when you want something fried rather than steamed, how to make the perfect crumbed fish covers the technique. And when you are ready to feed a crowd outdoors, the BBQ whole fish with coriander is hard to beat. You will find the rest of the dinner ideas over in our recipe collection.

— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen