Cod Kebabs on Skewers

Name: Grilled Cod Kebabs on Skewers with Olives and Red Pepper
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 50 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Cod 1; Red bell pepper (fleshy) 1; Pitted green olives 12; Olive oil 2 tbsp; Salt, black or mixed pepper, dried aromatic herbs, curry or turmeric to taste; Wooden skewers 6; Lettuce leaves, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes to taste; Lemon a few wedges; Parsley for garnish

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50 mins

In the East, step into a local restaurant or café, or really any eatery, and you will find dishes cooked on a grill, over coals or simply on a rack. Most of them are meat, fish or vegetables threaded onto wooden sticks. Notably, metal skewers are used in the more expensive places.

And if you want to try the local cuisine in the national style, with its local color, it is better to go where the locals like to spend their time. Alongside the familiar dishes of Eastern cuisine, try the ones called “shish”.

Shish kebab, for example, is a kebab not quite like the one we are used to and happily cook on holidays and weekends.

Besides meat, the skewers usually carry vegetables — tomatoes, peppers, also mushrooms, fruit or even pieces of fat-tail fat. We all remember that a kebab is served on a skewer with the side dish on a platter or plates. Small shish sticks are served on a laid platter with fresh and pickled or fermented vegetables, herbs and sauce. I particularly like it when the sauce comes in separate small cups and there is a choice of sauces — roughly the way fried cod is served with cheese sauce.

Today we made fish kebabs from cod. We chose cod because it is an Atlantic fish that is very common, available to everyone and inexpensive. Everybody catches cod. I remember that in my childhood there was always cod in the shop — huge frozen blocks that the shop staff broke up with a weight.

Still, we know cod better from canned cod liver, and a cod liver salad recipe is always at hand.

Ingredients

2 servings

Cod 1
Red bell pepper (fleshy) 1
Pitted green olives 12
Olive oil 2 tbsp
Salt, black or mixed pepper, dried aromatic herbs, curry or turmeric to taste
Wooden skewers 6

Lettuce leaves, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes to taste
Lemon a few wedges
Parsley for garnish

Step-by-step recipe

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How to prepare the fish

Since cod is not caught where we live, we buy it frozen. Still, I think cod can easily be replaced with pike perch.

Thaw the cod in the refrigerator. It is better not to do this in hot water or at room temperature: the best way is to put the frozen fish in the refrigerator overnight. By morning it will be slightly frozen, won’t release any liquid and won’t spoil.

Cut off the fillet and remove the skin. Use a sharp knife to separate the fillet from the backbone and remove all the bones. This is not difficult, as cod has few bones.
The skin is unnecessary and unpleasant unless you fry it in oil. It is easier to cut the fillet off the skin than the other way round: lay the fillet skin side down on a cutting board and cut the flesh away with a knife, holding the skin with a fork. With a little practice it is done in one motion, but for heaven’s sake, cut away from yourself (!)
Cut the cod fillet into pieces no longer than a matchstick. The shape of the pieces doesn’t matter: squares, diamonds, triangles — whatever comes out.

Spices and skewers

I recommend making your own blend of aromatic spices. You can buy a ready-made one, but I don’t recommend it. We have been making blends ourselves for a long time from simple spices, grinding them in a marble mortar.

Make the spice blend: take salt (sea salt works), black or mixed peppercorns, dried Mediterranean herbs and a little curry or turmeric, or saffron, to taste (or in equal parts). Grind everything in a mortar to a powder.
Sprinkle the cod pieces with the spices to taste and save the remaining blend for next time. By the way, this blend suits any fish.

Thread the kebabs. Peel the red bell pepper and cut it into slices. The green olives can be halved or left whole, but they must be pitted. Thread pieces of fish, pepper and olives onto wooden skewers, alternating them. This amount of ingredients gave me 6 kebabs. After threading, be sure to brush the surface of the fish with a little olive oil.

How to grill cod kebabs

Heat the grill very hot. If you use coals, light them; if it is an electric grill, switch it on. My setup is simpler: a grill pan, heated over high heat. The important point is that the grill must be very hot. If it isn’t hot enough, all the juice simply runs out of the fish and the kebab turns out like styrofoam. What matters is a crust, a seared top layer right at the start, that keeps all the juice inside.
Put the kebabs on the grill and cook for 3 minutes on each side.
Fish kebabs cook very fast: when the fish turns white and opaque, they are ready. Make sure they don’t burn. There is no need to baste them with anything.

Serving

While the kebabs are cooking, prepare the plates: lay out lettuce leaves, put sliced fresh cucumbers and tomatoes next to them, and be sure to add a lemon wedge.
Put the fish kebabs on plates, garnish with parsley, sprinkle with lemon juice and serve right away.
I recommend pouring yourself a glass of dry white wine to go with the kebabs.

Calories and macros

380 kcal

Serving ≈ 250 g

Protein45 g49% of kcal
Fat19 g48% of kcal
Carbs3 g3% of kcal

100 g153 kcalProtein 18.4 gFat 7.9 gCarbs 1.1 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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Cod Kebabs on Skewers

Ingredients

For the kebabs

For serving