The Unexpected Way Jean-Georges Boosts The Flavor Of Cod

French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, true to his continental name, is a restaurateur known for haute cuisine; the Jean-Georges in Manhattan serves up dishes such as pigeon (which is making a culinary comeback), lobster tartine, and turbot with Château-Chalon sauce. Still, he can be surprisingly down to earth at times and has been known to serve popcorn at his restaurants. In fact, one recipe he thought highly enough of to include in his cookbook "JGV: A Life in 12 Recipes" could be described as shockingly basic at its core. It's cod with ketchup sauce. 

Say what? That sounds like something a '90s suburban food blogger might have dreamed up, but if you take a look at the actual recipe, it's no glorified Filet-O-Fish. The sauce also includes butter, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, and Tabasco, a product some have described as the ideal hot sauce. Along with the ketchup, these simple ingredients somehow come together to create something Vongerichten described in InsideHook as: "A fabulous all-purpose concoction for fish, chicken, shellfish, even rice." In other words, it's a powerful flavor booster.

The rest of Vongerichten's recipe, however, includes typically complex touches including a complicated garnish. This is made from fennel, zucchini, celery, orange and red bell peppers, tomato, oil-cured black olives, Castelvetrano olives, capers, thyme leaves, Thai chile, Thai basil, and saffron, the most expensive spice in the world. Despite this complex garnish, it is the ketchup sauce that does most of the heavy lifting.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's cod in ketchup sauce actually dates back to the '90s (1991, to be exact) when he opened a restaurant called JoJo. JoJo, which is still open, has a tiny kitchen. There are only six stove burners to work with. This limits the chef's ability to make stocks for his sauces and is why the ketchup sauce came about; it not only eschews any long-simmered stocks but is made with not one but three bottled sauces (four, if you count the vinegar).

Was this French chef able to persuade sophisticated Manhattan diners to swallow his ketchupy fish? Well, he was savvy enough to give it a more elevated name, describing it as "roasted cod, vegetable marinere with sauce aromates." As for whether he succeeded or not, the dish is still on the "classics" menu at JoJo some 30 years after its invention. For us, that sounds like Vongerichten's cod in ketchup sauce was a resounding success.