Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [84]
Ackee and Saltfish is regarded by Jamaicans as their national dish, but the saltfish is now so expensive that Jamaicans joke that it is their “international dish”—only the tourists can afford it. Terra Nova Hotel chef Alphanso McLean serves Jamaican breakfast (Ackee and Saltfish with fried biscuits) on the wide and breezy hotel veranda, not so much to tourists, who seldom go to Kingston, as to affluent Jamaican businessmen and politicians. The fried biscuits are called johnnycakes and are the same biscuits served for breakfast with Jamaican molasses in the other Terranova, Newfoundland. Originally from southeastern New England, they were made from cornmeal and molasses, baked with pork dripping, and called jonny cakes, the name coming from “journey cakes” because they were taken on the road. They have followed the molasses-and-salt-cod route.
Caribbean saltfish dishes always involve shredding the fish, because it is of low quality. The saltfish, barely soaked, is hard and salty. The dishes depend on this for flavor.
Soak ¼ pound salt cod for 20 minutes. Boil it for 10 minutes. Boil fruit from 1 dozen fresh ackee 5 minutes. Heat vegetable oil in a skillet. In the countryside we always used coconut oil, but here I use soy. Add chopped onions, scallion, thyme, and ground black pepper. That ground pepper gives it a nice flavor. Then add minced pepper [hot scotch bonnet pepper]. Add ackee and crumbled saltfish.
—Alphanso McLean, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston
PUERTO RICO: SERENATA DE BACALAO
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, La Casita Blanca is just that—a one-story white building, a neighborhood bar built in 1922, which Jesus Perez took over in 1985. It is in Barrio Obrero, a neighborhood that many people do not want to go to after dark. But with its low one- and two-story houses in turquoise and salmon it is also one of the old areas of San Juan not yet overtaken by high-rise architecture.
Perez remembers that his family always made bacalao with roots, yams, breadfruit, yucca. “They ate it like this much more than with rice. My mother always bought whole fish hard and flat. Now I buy fillets. They are soft. They’re salted but not dried.” Drying makes the product more expensive, and since refrigeration is now widespread on the island, Puerto Ricans, and many other people throughout the developed world, cut costs by buying green cod. One salt cod dish from his childhood that has remained popular is Serenata. In St. Lucia this is called Brule Jol; in Trinidad Buljol; in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique Chiquetaille,
2 cups salt cod, desalinated, cleaned,
shredded, and boiled
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 hot green peppers
½ cup stuffed olives
4 hardboiled eggs, sliced
2 boiled potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup olive oil
Mix it well and serve with salt and pepper to taste.
—Jesus Perez, La Casita Blanca, San Juan, 1996
Also see page 91.
GUADELOUPE: FEROCE
Carmelite Martial, when asked what her favorite saltfish dish was, replied, “Well, since I don’t really like saltfish, maybe a little feroce. I like avocados.”
Mix avocado, kassav (cassava flour), grilled salt cod, a little hot pepper, and sunflower seed oil. Work them together with a spatula. Some people add cucumber, but it is not essential.
—Carmelite Martial, Le Table Creole, St. Felix, Guadeloupe
THE GREAT FRENCH DISGUISE
TE CONOZCO, BACALAO
AUNQUE VENGAS DESFRAZAO
(I would know you, salt cod
Even if you were wearing a disguise)
—Cuban proverb
Since at least the time of Taillevent, salt cod has always been embellished with richness because it is harsh. Butter, olive oil, cream have been used—Icelanders pour the rendered fat of lamb kidneys over it. In 1654, Louis de Bechamel, marquis de Nointel, financier in the court of Louis XIV, having invested huge sums in the Newfoundland fishery, and finding the market weak in France because