On Wednesday evening I went to the gym after work, and then headed home to make dinner. We tend to eat on the late side of things, usually aiming to sit down at about 8pm. Seeing as I had gone to the gym first, I knew whatever we would cook would need to be quick to prepare to be able to finish up by 9pm. By quick I mean 30 minutes from start to table.
I tweeted a photo of my plate, and had a few requests for the recipe and “how tos”.
I have to say this meal is very easy to do. It probably takes more time to do the dishes than to prepare, or eat. We did “team cooks” which means it was like a cooking date night, which is fun for us and also gave us time to chat and catch up on the day. It was an ideal mid-week meal and way to spend time together in the midst of our busy schedules.
By no means am I claiming this to be uber-healthy. But it is “from scratch” and delicious. If you make it, let me know how it goes – how much time it took, what you thought, if you would make it again… Enjoy!
The Menu
Oven roasted bacon wrapped cod
Pan fried potato chips
Pan seared kale with bacon
Shopping List
Two cod fillets
A packet of unsmoked streaky bacon
Kale
3 mid-sized new potatoes (about 3 inches in length)
estimated cost of meal: £8 ($13)
Kitchen equipment needed
A good knife
A cutting board
3 pans (one of which is good to take from stove top to oven)
2 forks to turn the potatoes with (we turned them one by one to ensure even cooking)
A wooden spoon (to stir the kale and bacon)
A spatula (to serve the fish)
Plates, knives, forks, napkins – and wine glasses 
Preparations and Steps
1. Turn on the oven to 200C (about 450F)
2. Wrap your cod fillets in bacon
3. Put the bacon wrapped fillets in a pan, and sear on the stove (the bacon provides enough fat so no additional required)
4. Once seared (about 3 minutes on the heat) put into the oven and leave to cook
5. Wash and thinly slice the three potatoes into crisp (potato chip) sized slices
6. In a non-stick pan, melt some butter (and we also added ground nut oil into the butter too—any high heat tolerant oil will do)
7. Layer the potato chips into one layer, and give the task of watching them and flipping the potatoes to one of your team (remember it is date cooking night!)
8. Chop up some bacon and throw into a pan (I used non-stick, bacon fat would help) and the potato watcher also starts frying the bacon
9. Meanwhile, the other person chops the kale greens from the stalks, and then chops up the kale (think bite sized bits)
10. By this stage the fish has been in the oven about 15 minutes, and the potatoes are pretty brown.
11. Add the kale to the bacon on the stovetop and turn the grill on in the oven.
12. While the bacon crisps up on the fish, sear the kale in the bacon (stir it continuously and it will turn a nice bright green and cook down)
13. By the time the bacon is crisped up a bit on the fish, the kale will be done and the chips too (don’t worry if you have to take the potatoes off the heat while kale and fish finishes)
14. Serve and enjoy! We enjoyed a glass of Jura with this meal. A true treat.
I do think the dishes might have taken as long to do as the cooking, but again we did this as a team. It was a lovely, fast, mid-week treat meal.
oooh, this looks fantastic! And pretty healthy (unless you have reasonable expectation you are in danger of a heart attack, I suppose).