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HAKE AND SQUID WITH COD TRIPE CATALAN STYLE

Ingredients for four servings: 4 choice center cut pieces of hake, 2 squids of 30 grams each after cleaning, 100 grams cod tripes, beef stock, 100 grams spinach, I spoonful of Corinth raisins, 1 spoonful of pine nuts, white beans, a sprig of chervil, 1 shallot, butter, virgin olive oil, red wine, salt and pepper.

Soak the beans, the raisins and the tripe the night before, each one separately.

Scale the hake but keep the skin on and wash it. Clean the squid and remove the tentacles. Cook the beans in water over a low heat. Poach the tripe, saving the cooking water.

Cut the squid into julienne strips; saute in olive oil. Put a pan on medium heat with butter and cook the minced shallot. When it is soft, add red wine that has already been reduced. Then add the beans and the tripe, diced, then a little beef stock, and bring to a boil. Bind it with butter, salt and pepper.

Season the hake and put it in a pan with the skin side oiled.

Quickly saute the spinach, previously washed, and add pine nuts and raisins.

Make a bed of beans on each plate, add a spoonful of tripe, some sauce and the squid. On top of this, place the hake, skin side up. Decorate the edges with beans, spinach, pine nuts and raisins. Place a sprig of chervil on top of the fish.

—El Raco de con Fabes restaurant,

Barcelona, from Rafael Garcia Santos,

El Bacalao en la cocina Vasca y las mejores recetas del mundo

(Salt Cod in Basque cooking and the

best recipes of the world), 1996

Down to Skin and Bones

Before Iceland was modernized, cod skin was roasted and served to children with butter. Hallfredur Eiriksson recalled from his childhood: “The skin is always pulled off the dried fish before it is eaten; the dry skin is tough but becomes soft and edible when roasted over the open fire.”

Cod bones (as well as sheep and cattle bones) were prepared as follows:

[The bones] are put in sour whey where they lie until they are partly disintegrated and soft and then the whole thing is boiled slowly until the bones are tender and the mixture curds like thick porridge.

—Andrea Nikólína Jónsdóttir, Ný matreidslubók, 1858

CHOWDER

The word comes from the French chaudière, which was a large iron pot. Today the pots are often aluminum but are still standard equipment on fishing vessels, used for a simple warm, one-pot dish of fresh fish and ship’s provisions. Most North Atlantic fishing communities make some variety of chowder. A sixteenth-century recipe for chowder was written in the Celtic language of Cornwall. The Cornish word for fishmonger, jowter, leads some historians to argue that chowder is of Cornish origin. It is frequently said that the French and English fishermen on the Grand Banks introduced chowder to Newfoundland cuisine and that from there it traveled south to Nova Scotia and New England. But Native Americans in these regions were already making fish chowder, though without the pork, when the Europeans arrived.

The original ingredients were salt pork, sea biscuit, and either fresh or salt cod, all carefully layered in the pot. These ingredients are standard long-conservation provisions of a fishing ship. Sea biscuits or hardtack, which later developed specific names for different shapes and sizes, such as pilot bread or Cross Crackers, were the forerunner of the cracker—a bread too hard to go stale. Potatoes were added to chowder recipes later. Newfoundland’s Fishermen’s Brewis is a classic chowder, but with the liquid cooked away. (See page 11.)

BUT PLEASE...

NOWADAYS, ALL TOO FREQUENTLY IT [CHOWDER] COMES TO THE TABLE IN A THIMBLE. YOU MEASURE IT OUT WITH AN EYEDROPPER. YET, IN ITS DAY, A CHOWDER WAS THE CHIEF DISH AT A MEAL. THOUGH IT HAS FALLEN FROM THIS PROUD ESTATE, IT IS NOT, NOT, ONE OF THOSE FINE, THIN FUGITIVE SOUPS THAT YOU DELICATELY TOY WITH IN A GENTEEL LADY’S TEA-ROOM.... AND P.S.—PLEASE DON T SERVE IT IN A CUP.

—compiled by Harriet