Enough with the cod! No, never enough. Especially when you get something like the above dish, poached cod with finely sliced onion and diced tomato. Add a little olive oil, a trace of diced parsley.
In the early years of my marriage, when I first tasted it, my mother-in-law would buy merluzzo from a market near their home in Dearborn. Of course I had never heard of merluzzo; of course she had never heard of cod. I knew cod as the feathery white stuff inside a crispy batter defining “fish and chips” we ate at Sullivans in Saginaw. She knew merluzzo as the inexpensive white fish they ate back in Italy. Over time I got the impression that merluzzo/cod was a second tier fish. These days it most definitely is. Orata, branzino, san pietro, coda di rospo are first tier fishes along that part of the Adriatic. My wife wouldn’t eat cod. And still she prefers not to.
Her loss. My gain.
The fish shown above was served among our cold antipasti at Ristorante da Gennaro, just north of Pesaro, in the hills above the Adriatic. Home-cooking, the daily catch. Simple, fresh, and delicious.