• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Preparation: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 500 gr. of salt cod, 750 gr. of potatoes, 100 gr. of onion, a few branches of celery, 1 white of a leek, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 table spoons of tomato paste, 3 table spoons of oil, 1 bouquet garni, salt, pepper, chopped parsley.

Desalinate, poach and drain the salt cod, heat the oil in a pot. Toss in the chopped onion, the leek and the celery, also chopped. Let it cook for ten minutes. Peel the potatoes, cut them in thick rounds and cook them in the above preparation. When the potatoes are almost cooked, add the salt cod. Let it simmer slowly for ten minutes. Serve very hot, sprinkle with chopped parsley. Optional: add a little crème fraîche at the time of serving.

This recipe won the prix Terre-Neuve.

—Committee for Study and Information for the

Development of Salt Cod Consumption,

Salt Cod: The Fish, Its Preparation, Its Nutritional,

Culinary, and Economic Qualities, Paris, 1960

THE DIASPORA OF THE WEST INDIA CURE

WEST AFRICA: STOCKFISH AND EGUZI

The slave trade left West Africa with a taste for cured cod, though to most West Africans, all that remains is a tradition of salting and drying local fish. Some West African towns, such as Kaolack, Senegal, offer a sight that has vanished from Gloucester and Petty Harbour—a shore covered with miles of fish flakes. Kaolack is inland but near the coast on the Saloum River and serves as a jumping-off spot for the headwaters of the Niger, a major artery of regional trade which moves this saltfish through the sub-Sahara and Sahara. But Nigeria has hard currency from oil and can import cod. Nigerians, especially Ibos, love dried cod, which they too call stockfish. This recipe comes from an Ibo who was born in the town of Bende near the Delta, and who now lives in the United States.

Wash the.stockfish in hot water and soak it five minutes. Then boil it for several hours until it is soft. Then add goat meat. When the goat meat is cooked add eguzi [seeds of the green squash known in Nigeria as melon]. Add onions and minced ukazi [an herbal leaf]. Add crayfish. Then stir in ugbo [a thickener made from ground seeds, which have been cooked for hours until soft].

—Joy Okori, Washington, D.C., 1997

BRAZIL: BACALHUA COM LEITE DE COCO

1 pound saltcod

1 freshly-grated coconut

4 tablespoons butter or oil

2 chopped onions

2 chopped tomatoes

2 or 3 drops hot pepper sauce

1 tablespoon dendê oil [a palm oil from Bahia]

Desalinate salt cod. Remove thick milk from coconut and reserve. To the residue add 2 cups hot water and remove thinned milk by pressing through a sieve. Fry saltcod in butter or oil with the onions and tomatoes and wet with the thin milk of the coconut. Cook over a low flame, occasionally stirring. When ready to serve, shake the pepper sauce on the fish, add the dendê oil and the thick coconut milk.

—Rosa Maria, A Arte de Comer Bem, Rio de Janeiro, 1985

.JAMAICA: CODFISH RUN DOWN

Today, “Run Down” is usually prepared with dark, oily, local fish. But the old-fashioned way was with salt cod. Alphanso McLean makes it for friends, though it is considered “too country” to be served at his place of business.

Grate coconut and let it sit in water. Force it through a strainer. Boil the strained liquid and keep stirring until oil comes to top. Add saltfish, onions, tomato and serve with yellow yam and green banana.

—Alphanso McLean, chef, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston, 1996

Jamaica: ACKEE AND SALTFISH

ELENA RASHLY ASKED VIOLET TO GIVE US A NATIVE DISH. SHE PRODUCED WHAT IS CALLED “SALTFISH AND ACKEE”—WHICH I AFTERWARDS FOUND DESCRIBED AS A DISH HIGHLY ESTEEMED BY THE NATIVES BUT LESS BY OTHER PEOPLE.

—Edmund Wilson, The Sixties, 1993

It seems that much of Wilson’s grumpiness on the subject stems from the fact that he got ackee poisoning. “I don’t remember ever suffering in such a peculiar way as this,” he wrote. Ackee is a West African fruit brought to Jamaica in 1793 by the infamous Captain Bligh, for whom it is named in botany —Blighia sapida. Like its