Prep: Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a rectangular baking dish that will comfortably hold all your cod pieces and tomatoes and place the fish inside.
Add vegetables: Scatter the onion, garlic, tomatoes and olives around the fish.
Season: Drizzle the olive oil all over the ingredients in the dish. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning and season with salt and pepper.
Finish and bake: Pour the water into the dish. Scatter the butter evenly over the dish. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the tomatoes and fish are cooked.
Notes
Ingredient notes
Cod: This recipe is delicious with any white fish that bakes in 15-20 minutes. Choose thicker, firmer fish fillets for best results.
Tomatoes: Feel free to use regular tomatoes vs cherry tomatoes. I recommend removing at least part of the seedy part to keep the dish from turning out watery. Dice the tomatoes into 1-inch pieces before adding to the dish.
Red onion: Feel free to leave these out if you’re sensitive to onion.
Olives: If you don’t like olives, leave them out. Capers are a great substitute, if you like those. Green olives can also be used, but I personally prefer black ones (Kalamata are my favorite!).
Butter: The butter is technically not needed, but it does yield a super delicious sauce and helps to keep the fish from drying out. Feel free to cut the amount in half or leave it out entirely for a slimmer dish. If you leave it out, brush the top of the fish with olive oil.
White wine: This recipe is delicious with white wine, but works great with just water, too. So don’t worry if you don’t want to use the wine, it’s not essential to the success of the recipe.
Recipe tips
To keep the cod from sticking to the baking dish, make sure to lightly wipe the dish with olive oil before adding the fillet pieces.
If you have skin-on fillets, place the fish with the skin down to reduce the risk of sticking.
What temperature should you cook the fish to?
I cook the fish until it reaches an internal temperature of 145°F in the thickest part of the fish. Another tell-tale sign your fish is done is opaque flesh that flakes easily.(Source: See the chart with minimum safe cooking temperatures from the US government’s food safety site.)