BUTTER SEARED COD WITH MIXED BEAN AND CHARD BROTH

A rich and sumptuously rewarding good for you dinner, butter seared fillet of cod served on top of a full flavoured chicken broth loaded with mixed beans and chard.

Hands on time 10 minutes / Cooking time 30 minutes

Ingredients 

(serves 2)

2 large pieces of fresh cod

2 tbsp butter

2 glugs olive oil

1 can mixed beans drained

6 leaves of chard sliced

1 ltr chicken stock (homemade recipe below)

4 okra fingers chopped

1 small onion finely diced

2 cloves garlic sliced

1 rib of celery finely diced

1 leek finely diced

1 small carrot finely diced

1 bay leaf

2 sprigs of thyme

2 tbsp fresh parsley chopped

Sea salt

Black pepper

Heat a shallow casserole dish, add one tablespoon of butter and a glut of olive oil, heat medium, add the okra, onion, garlic, celery, leek and carrot soften gently for 15 minutes, add the chicken stock, bay leaf the thyme and bring to a simmer, add the beans, season to taste with salt and pepper.

Heat a skillet medium hot add the remaining butter and olive oil, sear the cod for 3 minutes until a golden crust is established, turning over and finish cooking the cod by turning the cod over and gently placing in the broth, add the chard at this time too, leave to simmer for a couple of minutes, serve immediately and enjoy.

HOMEMADE CHICKEN BONE STOCK

1 organic free rooting chicken 

1.5 ltr water

1 onion quartered

2 carrots

3 sticks celery

4 cloves garlic crushed

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp parsley stems and leaves

3 sprigs of thyme

1 sprig rosemary

10 black peppercorns

Pinch sea salt

Place all the stock ingredients in a deep pan and gently simmer for an hour or so, take off the heat when you can pull on a bone and it gently pulls away from the chicken.  Leave the chicken to cool  in the broth, this will allow some of the stock to soak back into the chicken ensuring you have the juiciest chicken ever for other meals.  Strain the stock ready for use.

Good For You Geeky Food Facts About Jewish Penicillin Stock

Chicken bone stock is so good for you, the broth water has calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, trace minerals, chodroitin sulphates and glucosamine, these latter two ingredients are expensive to buy as supplements, but they are found naturally in bone broths.  You need magnesium so your body and convert vitamin D into it's active form so that it can in turn be used to absorb calcium.  We only need around 400mg of calcium a day, but the RDA says 1200mg, the reason for this is that we do not absorb all the calcium we eat, but if you have a balanced diet the extra calcium you absorb can lead to kidney stones and calcium in the blood stream and heart disease, chicken stock is anti viral, anti bacterial and scientifically proven to be 25% as effective as penicillin.