Traditional Norwegian Cod Dinner

Supposedly we Norwegians are so healthy and live so long because we eat so much cod (and have a teaspoon of cod liver oil every day in all months with R in them), and before we found the oil, we wouldn't have survived without the cod, and thanks to the cod we also got the oil. It happened like this.

When EU was formed, Norway got really worried that Spanish and Italian fishermen should come all the way up here and fish "our" fish, and sent negotiators to Brussels to talk our case. And after months of negotiating, EU agreed that the part of the North Sea, which is the continental shelf Norway is located on, should all belong to Norway. So Norway became a very big country, although most of it is under water. Nobody knew that oil would be found on this enlarged part of Norway till ten years later, and I am not so sure EU would have been as generous if they had known that, after all most of the oil is found closer to both the Netherlands and UK.

But we saved the cod, which is still not extinct in the Norwegian waters, and we still eat and sell a lot of it. Most of what we sell, we sell dried, and Christmas would not be the same in places like Portugal and Brazil unless they have cod from Norway, which they call Baccalao and make wonderful dishes out of. We here, however, prefer the fish so fresh that it taste more like cream than fish, and how we get and keep the fish so fresh is by freezing it practically as soon as it is caught - litterally, which you can see in this video that my friend and fishmonger Daniel has taken on board a cod trawler.

"Of women and sardines, the small is the preferrable", we say, but when it comes to cod, the bigger the better. The bigger it is, the more the consistancy becomes like meat, and some of the best cod we get, we call skrei, and which is the fish that comes down from the arctic to the coast of Norway some time in February, where it is fished and dried around the Lofoten islands a bit north of the middle of Norway. So if you buy cod, look for the thick pieces as they normally come from a big cod. And here is what you do if you want to make the most common meal in Norway when I grew up, although these days we serve it as party food, because even here good fish has become expensive.

You need:
Potatoes (2 medium ones per person and 2 for the pot, as we say)
Carrots (1 per person) sliced
Peas or sweet peas - as much as you like
Butter
Flour
Milk
About 200-250 g (1/2 pound) of cod in pieces per person (frozen is fine, just remember to take it out and put it in the fridge the night before, but if you forget, no problem, treat the frozen pieces like they were not and bake them for 20-25 minutes instead)
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

Start with setting the owen on as high as it goes.

Then you put the potatoes to boil. Wash them (but don't peel them, as most of the nourishment of the potatoe is either in the skin or right underneath it), cover them with cold water and let them boil for about 20 minutes, and check with a fork if they are cooked.

While they are boiling do the vegetable stew. Boil the carrots for a minute or so, you still want a bit of bite in them, then sieve off the water and save it. In a saucepan melt about 1 tablespoon of butter (this portion will be enough for 4-5 people if you are more people, take more butter) and stir in 1 tablespoon of wheat flower, then gradually add some of the carrot water and finally a little bit of milk. Taste it off with salt, pepper and a bit of nutmeg. Then add the carrots, and then some frozen peas. And when this is done you start with the fish.

Butter an oven-proof dish, salt and pepper the fish pieces and put them in it. Cover it with aluminum foil and bake it in the oven on as high heat as possible for 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the pieces. The fish is supposed to have turned from translucent to white when it's done. If it seems not to have become all white, leave it for a bit longer, unlike salmon, you can not overcook cod.

All you have to do now, is to melt some butter to go with this meal, and if it's Sunday put some chopped parsley in it (only parsley on Sunday's when I was a kid, and then we even got the potatoes peeled, but then they didn't know that the nourishment was in the peeling). And if you have done this as I told you, everything for this meal should be ready at the same time.