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The most highly developed salt cod cuisine in the world is that of the Spanish Basque provinces. Until the nineteenth century, salt cod was exclusively food of the poor, usually broken up in stews. In PYSBE’s 1936 collection of salt cod recipes, the largest section is devoted to stews. Few of these old-style salt cod dishes can still be found in the restaurants of the Basque provinces, but they are still made at home from the least expensive cut of bacalao: desmigado (trimmings). The most expensive cuts are tongues and lomo, the choice center cut of a fillet from high up near the head, cut from a larger cod.

WITH CIDER

A salt cod omelette and chuleta-a shell steak, coated in salt and then grilled—are the two specialties of Basque cider mills. In both cases, the idea is to serve something salty to induce thirst. In San Sebastián’s province of Guizpúzcoa, cider mills, sidrerias, are open only from January to April, during which time they try to lure as many people as possible to their tasting rooms so that they will have customers after the barrel-fermented cider is bottled in April. Customers are served food while standing at tall tables. Then, thirsty from the salt, they wander to the tasting room, sample, wander back and eat a little more, then taste some more. The cider room has barrels ten feet high. A hole is tapped, and customers stand in the middle of the room and catch the cider in large, straight-sided glasses, as it spouts from the hole. The glasses should be held vertically so that the cider hits the far side, not the bottom, creating a slight head as the taster walks his glass toward the barrel and then lifts it away, freeing the spout to land in the waiting glass of the next taster at the back of the room. Remarkably little cider ends up on the floor, which is probably proof of its low alcohol content.

The following recipe comes from a sidreria in a wooded mountain suburb of San Sebastián. The omelette has a wonderful salt cod taste, which is probably enhanced by using a far better cut than is traditional for this dish.

Soak the lomo for 36 hours and no longer to keep a little taste. Sauté chopped onions and a pinch of parsley in olive oil. Add the soaked and drained salt cod. Then add eggs beaten with a small amount of water. The secret is to do all this very quickly.

—Nati Sancho, cook for Sidreria Zelaia, 1996

BACALAO A LA VIZCAÍNA

In the nineteenth century, elegant salt cod dishes were created using a choice piece of lomo, always kept whole with the skin left on and served with a sauce. Three dishes became, and remain, dominant: bacalao a la Vizcaina, al pil pil, and club ranero . With their red, yellow, and orange sauces, the beauty of these dishes was part of their appeal. Like the standard repertoire of a concert violinist, all great Basque chefs must demonstrate some skill in these three dishes without taking liberties with the standard recipes. Great debates circulate over arcane issues such as the soaking of the fish. Should it be thirty-eight hours as Jenaro Pildain at Guria in Bilbao says, or forty-eight as recommended by Juan Jose Castillo at Casa Nicolas in San Sebastián? Pildain soaks it in the refrigerator. Castillo sometimes uses mineral water for soaking, claiming he detects a chlorine taste in the tap water.

Despite their elegance, these dishes used to appear in the most humble settings. Before the Spanish Civil war, a woman owned a tavern in Arakaldo, a small Basque village in Vizcaya. Typical of the inexpensive village eateries of the 1930s, the tavern in Arakaldo offered all the classic salt cod dishes to the poor people of the village. Her son worked with her and learned the repertoire. Today he is often referred to as el rey de bacalao (the king of salt cod). His famous restaurant on the main commercial street of Bilbao, Restaurante Guria, is considered the definitive place for the three classic dishes which he learned from his mother.

“Funny, it was food for poor people then. Now they are the most prestigious dishes I do,” said Pildain.

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