Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [86]
—Deotinda Maria Avila,
Foods of the Azores Islands, 1977
JAMAICA: STOMP AND Go
Mix 1 pound flour with water until it is thin.
Add ¼ pound soaked boiled and crumbled saltfish.
Beat in 2 eggs.
Add a little baking powder, sauted onions, scallion,
thyme.
Mix together.
Drop spoonfuls in hot oil.
-Alphanso McLean, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston
PUERTO RICO : BACALAITOS
Pupa is the popular nickname for Providencia Trabal, who is passionate about all Puerto Rican subjects. She used to demonstrate traditional Puerto Rican cooking on television. Now she cooks for relatives in the narrow high-ceilinged kitchen of her San Juan apartment. This is how she makes Bacalaitos.
About 2 cups wheat flour
1 or 2 spoonfuls of baking soda
Add to the last water from soaking the salt cod.
Work into a thick batter.
½ pound already boiled salt cod crumbled in
Add a spoonful of garlic chopped with oregano
Add 2 spoonfuls finely chopped onions
Add 2 spoonfuls finely chopped tomato
Add chopped coriander leaf and culantro (local herb)
Fry in hot corn oil dropping in a spoonful at a time from
a ladle.
—Providencia Trabal, San Juan, 1996
“Aye, Que Bonita!” she exclaimed, and they are beautiful: two-inch amber puffs with the red and green of the herbs and vegetables brightened from quick cooking.
BRANDADE
Some believe brandade de morue began in Nimes, but it is more commonly associated with Provence. It was originally called branlade, meaning “something that is pummeled,” which it is. The dish had made it to Paris by the time of the French Revolution and never left. In 1894, writer Alphonse Daudet started a circle that met at the Café Voltaire on Place de l‘Odéon for a regular diner de la brandade.
Since salt cod has become expensive, potatoes have been added—brandade de morue parmentier. Antoine-Auguste Parmentier was an eighteenth-century officer who popularized the potato in the French Army, and his name has ever since meant “with potatoes.” In 1886, brandade was decreed an official part of the enlisted man’s mess in the French Army. As the price of salt cod has risen, so has the amount of potatoes in the brandade. Sometimes the dish simply seems like fishy mashed potatoes. As American Sara Josepha Hale wrote in her 1841 book, The Good Housekeeper, “The salted codfish is cheap food, if potatoes are used freely with it.” The original brandade had no potatoes.
The following recipe, by the great nineteenth-century Provençal chef J.-B. Reboul, is especially flavorful because of the use of the skin.
MORUE EN BRANDADE
Use good salt cod, not too soaked and well scaled, cook as above (soaked 12 hours in fresh water, scaled and cut in squares. Put in a pot covered in cold water, put on the heat until a foam rises to the surface and skim it off), drain it. Carefully remove the bones, but leave the skin which contributes a great deal to the success of the operation. Put the well-cared-for pieces in a pot placed on a corner, so that it is gently heated with the milk in a small pot to one side and the oil in another, both moderately warm. Begin adding a spoonful of oil to the salt cod, work it strongly with a wooden spoon, crushing the piece against the sides of the pot, adding from time to time, little by little, the oil and the milk, alternating the two but always working hard with the wooden spoon. When the preparation becomes creamy, when you can no longer make out any pieces, the brandade is finished.
—J.-B. Reboul,
La Cuisinière Provençale, Marseille, 1910
The author goes on to suggest that truffles, lemon juice, white pepper, grated nutmeg, or garlic can be added and concludes by warning: “If we were health advisers, we might counsel you to use this dish in moderation.”
THE FISH