Tuesday, August 12, 2008

"Grilled" Seafood Bake

I had intended to grill my little New England foil packets, but it was pouring rain. And thundering...and lightening...and apparently the lightning struck something nearby because we lost power for a couple of hours, too. Not good when you have an electric stove!

Luckily, the power returned and I fired up the oven for the first time. It didn't go that well. It wasn't the fault of the oven. Rather, it occurred to me as I ate a questionably-cooked shrimp that it would be impossible under any circumstance for the following ingredients to arrive simultaneously at doneness:

* cod filets
* shrimp
* corn on the cob (which is freakishly difficult to cut in half)
* potatoes...especially potatoes


I learned from my last foil-packet-o-fish experiment that I needed to increase the time considerably from my regular fish-cooking time. I did this and checked the packets. The potatoes and corn were kind of cooked, and I decided to serve dinner as-was because the cod was done. After we started eating, however, I found a semi-raw shrimp that was snuggled underneath my corn. Ew. Back into the oven they went. All in all, I quadrupled the grilling time suggested in the recipe (with the packets in the oven at 400ยบ. By the time I pulled them from the oven, everything was perfect, but the cod was overcooked! *sigh* They can't all be good...

The almost-cooked dinner:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe par-boil the potato next time...and the corn too? Although I guess that would defeat the ease of the recipe!

Erin Murphy said...

In the end, the corn and potatoes and shrimp were perfect — just the cod was overcooked.

Theoretically, I could cook the packets for half the time, open them and toss in the fish, then finish cooking. But, as you said, there goes the 'set it and forget it' nature of this recipe!

Thanks for your comment!