Sumptuous Saturday Seven - baked hake with potatoes and vegetables

We haven't had a blog entry on cooking for some time: not because I've stopped cooking, but because I have been rotating all the dishes which I know how to cook and have not tried something new. Well, today I tried a new dish - baked hake - which went down well.

The impetus for this dish came from a few days ago when we volunteered to cook a meal for another bereaved family on the kibbutz. I didn't realise at the time that I would be working late every day during the week (due to travelling commitments), so I had to choose a dish which would be easy for my wife to cook. In the end, she made a salad and my daughter made a vegetarian dish, so I didn't have to coach her. After finding a recipe, I decided to try it myself.

The first instruction had me slightly baffled: julienne the onions.  I sliced an onion into strips and fried them. The next instruction had me adding potato slices to the frying onions and continuing to cook; after a minute or so, I realised that this was not a good idea as the potatoes were either sticking to the pan or not getting cooked at all. So I added a few cups of boiling water and boiled the potatoes. When making mashed potatoes, I cook for fifteen minutes, so I decided to remove the potatoes after only ten minutes, thus partially cooking them but leaving them whole.

I also decided to cook vegetables with the fish and potatoes, so I chopped some courgettes and carrots, cooking them in the microwave for ten minutes. I then placed a sheet of baking paper on the oven pan, placed the potatoes on the paper, then layered the fish and covered them with the vegetables. I sprinkled parsley on top of the fish, sprinkled salt and doused the food with olive oil (with rather more than the one tablespoon mentioned in the recipe; at the moment we have a bottle of oil with a larger opening than usual so I am using more oil than I need). I cooked the dish in the oven for thirty minutes at 150 degrees C.

The result was surprisingly good, although I thought it a little bland. No one had any criticism. I think that next time I will add some tomatoes to the vegetable layer - a little bit of acid will help the taste.