Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [79]
Younger generations in Iceland don’t eat dried cod head or sheep head very much, and there has not been a verifiable decline in intelligence.
THE ISLAND HEAD
In much of the salt cod-eating world, there are myths about cod heads because the head is rarely seen. According to a medieval Catalan legend, the cod’s head is removed to conceal the fact that it is human. Though salt cod is a regular part of the Caribbean diet, few Caribbeans have ever seen a cod head. Carmelite Martial, a popular Creole cook in Guadeloupe who was born in 1919, said she never saw one. But her grandmother, who was born in 1871, had told Carmelite that she had a cod head locked away in a strongbox. What is more, the head had hair on it. “I never saw it,” said Martial, who does not include cod head in her extensive cod repertoire.
SPARE PARTS
TWO WIZENED LITTLE BOYS, LOOKING MORE LIKE TINY OLD MEN, APPEARED WITH TIN CANS. THEY HAD ON KNEE BOOTS AND WADED AROUND ON THE EDGE OF THE WATER AMONG THE FISH HEADS. EACH HAD A POCKET KNIFE AND WHEN HE FOUND A HEAD OF HIS LIKING HE CUT A THREE CORNERED SLIT UNDER THE JAW AND TOOK OUT THE TONGUE. WHEN HE HAD HIS PAIL FULL HE DUMPED THE TONGUES OUT ON AN EMPTY TABLE AND FILLED HIS CAN WITH CLEAN SEA WATER. THEN HE WASHED THE PILE AND REPLACED THE TONGUES IN THE CAN....
... WE WATCHED THE CLEANING OF THE FISH EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK AND NEVER FOUND OUR TASTE FOR COD ON THE DINNER MENU AT ALL IMPAIRED, BUT WHENEVER THE CARD SAID “BROILED CODS’ TONGUES,” TWO THIN, WAN FACES AND LITTLE BODIES STOOPED OVER A PILE OF CODS’ HEADS APPEARED BEFORE US AND WE KNEW THAT WE COULD NOT POSSI- BLY ORDER TONGUES.
—Doris Montgomery,
The Gaspé Coast in Focus, 1940
Once the meat, the head, and the liver have been eaten, is the rest ready to be ground into fish meal? From the rickety fishing villages of the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts, to rugged New England communities, to the fishermen’s families of Brittany and Normandy, to the Basque women who washed salt cod for slave wages, to the pre-twentieth-century Icelanders who had almost nothing, come the following recipes, most of them delicacies today, although they originated with the poor.
Tongues and Checks
The scallop-sized, or sometimes even larger, disk of flesh on each side of the head is the most delicate meat on the cod. It is often served with “tongues,” the throats, which have a richer taste and more gelatinous texture.
Cod tongues and cheeks, [are] rolled in corn meal, fried until brown. The tongue is not really the tongue, but the blob of meat at its base.
Pork chop is a cheek cut off with a piece ofjaw bone and fried.
—compiled by Harriet Adams, comments by N. M. Halper,
Vittles for the Captain: Cape Cod Sea-Food Recipes,
Provincetown, 1941
STEWED CODFISH TONGUES
1 lb. fresh codfish tongues
1 large onion
½ lb. clear pork fat
salt
pepper
Place pork in fry pan and let cook until brown, add onion then tongues which have been cleaned well. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer about ½ hour.
—compiled by the Ingonish Women’s Hospital Auxiliary,
From the Highlands and the Sea,
Ingonish, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 1974
THE BASQUE TONGUE: KOKOTCHAS DE BACALAO VERDE
Basques are passionate about fish tongues, both salt cod and fresh hake. They use the Basque word kokotxas (pronounced cocoachas, it was sometimes spelled phonetically before modem Basque was established) and commonly prepare dozens of recipes. This is the best-known classic. The oil would always be olive oil.
Ingredients: 100 grams of salt cod tongues, garlic according to taste, parsley (the more the better), small onion, oil, milk
Preparation: Soak the tongues for