Cod with Clams and Smoked Bacon

So, now that I am out of my old flat and my things are in storage, I am without all of my wonderful one-use kitchen utensils and my library of hardly used cookbooks. In fact, the only things from my old kitchen I will be taking with me to Madrid are my nice chefs knifes and, of course, my copy of Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food.

That said, there are upsides to moving to a new area. For one, there are lots of new and exciting places to source ingredients for my recipe attempts.  My old neighbourhood of Fitzrovia was seriously lacking a decent fishmonger, whereas my new temporary home in Notting Hill has quite a few to choose from. My favourite, and right on my doorstep, is the wonderful James Knight of Mayfair.

Now, lets be clear, this certainly isn’t the cheapest fishmonger you will ever come across. However, the quality of the fish and seafood is undoubtedly first rate. The produce is all wonderfully laid out on a huge ice shelf at the front of the store.

What a sight! It’s enough to make you hungry just walking past the shop and I didn’t need any more of an excuse to tackle something from the “Catch of the Day” section of my Great British Pub Food book. The picture that goes along with the recipe for “Cod with Clams and Smoked Bacon” had me drooling – it’s exactly the sort of flavour packed dish I go nuts for. I popped over to James Knight and picked up two fantastic, thick pieces of fresh cod and a small bag of clams and got cracking. You can sea the fish and the clams below, along with the other ingredients of smoked streaky bacon, fresh thyme, white wine, olive oil and butter.

First of all, I gave the clams a scrub in several changes of fresh water to clean off any grit trapped on the shells. At this stage, if any of your clams don’t close up when they are knocked, you should throw them away. I then set these to one side and seasoned the cod fillets with some good quality sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

To a large, hot pan I added a glug of olive oil and then added the fish, skin side down, along with a couple of sprigs of thyme.

After about three minutes, I carefully turned the fillets over using a fish slice and added a few knobs of butter to the pan. As the butter melted, I used it to baste the fish, which I let cook for just another minute or so.

I then carefully removed the cod from the pan (by now it was starting to come apart in big, juicy flakes) and set them to one side for later.

I then took another large saucepan, this time one with a tight fitting lid, and added some more of the olive oil. I roughly chopped the streaky bacon and, as soon as the oil was hot, added it to the pan along with a few more sprigs of thyme.

The bacon sautéed for a few minutes until it had taken on a nice colour and had begun to release its fat.

Once that was done, I added in a generous glass of white wine and brought the liquid quickly to the boil before tipping in the clams and sealing the pan tightly with the lid.

With the heat turned up high, I let the clams steam for about 4 minutes, giving the pan a gentle shake every now and then as they cooked, until all of the clams had opened up nicely. I tasted the cooking juices and added a bit more black pepper before sitting the cod fillets back over the clams to warm through.

That was it, lunch was ready! I divided the cod between two plates and tipped over the clams and cooking juices before garnishing with a sprig of thyme. You can see the finished dishes below served with the rest of the white wine and a fresh bag of chips from the local fish and chip shop. Heaven!

So, did it taste as good as I had hoped? Absolutely. The cod, clams and bacon were a perfect combination and the chips, soaked in salt and malt vinegar, made great sponges for the cooking juices. Being critical, I could have got the skin on the cod a little crispier and the dish was a touch heavy on salt, perhaps from the choice of streaky bacon I had used. But to be fair, neither of these would be hard to fix next time and they can hardly be blamed on Gordon’s recipe.  So many pubs in London serve bog standard battered cod and chips. If only a few more places could produce something like this instead!