Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [44]
Along with the salt cod went stockfish, which is made from the same members of the Gadidae family, cod, hake, coley and so on, but without the salting process. The fish is simply split and dried. This is the board-like fish that hangs in high rows, fringing shops in Ghana and other parts of Africa, still its main market. You will not find it easy to obtain in Britain or America. In some languages, the word stockfish is used interchangeably with the word for salt cod. And one can make use of them interchangeably in the same recipes, with adjustments of soaking time and seasoning. They are a sombre reminder – like black and red herrings (p. 191) – of the days of slavery: boats full of salt cod would set out from Boston for Spain and Africa, keeping back a little of their cargo to feed the people that were then crammed into the empty holds for the journey to the West Indies. Their place was taken by the sugar and molasses of the plantations that the slaves were imported to produce, and so back to Boston. This means, of course, that another source of good salt fish recipes is the Caribbean and Brazil.
HOW TO CHOOSE AND PREPARE COD
Whether you are buying whole fish, fillets or steaks, the top quality comes from inshore codling. It should look particularly bright and fresh; the steaks should have a milky whiteness that draws your eye.
Do not let this put you off coley (also called saithe and coalfish), which is a most unalluring dark greyish-pink colour. Often it is a good second best; it whitens in the cooking and tastes pleasant enough. For Bergen fish soup, below, one of the finest and most delicate of all fish soups, it is essential. You will find it works well in cod chowders (p. 515), too, and for fish stocks when you cannot get hold of fish bones and trimmings. I admit it is not the best of the cod-like fish – hake, haddock, whiting would be most people’s preference – but I feel protective towards it ever since I heard an old lady say to a fishmonger, ‘Oh, and give me a bit of coley for the cat!’
Cod’s head and shoulders used to be a favourite of the Victorian family table. There are good pickings, but today we are more squeamish. If you have a modern young fishmonger with a genteel trade, you may be able to get the cod’s head from him for very little (an older man may well have a better idea of its worth). Use the head for fish stock, removing the cheeks, jaw muscle, and so on, when they are just cooked. Or make soup – see the Salmon head soup on p. 318 – using the cooked fish as a final garnish. The reason people ate the cod’s head and shoulder in the past was because they were quite sufficient for a dish, and also because it is difficult to cook a whole cod evenly – ‘when the thick part is done, the tail is insipid and overdone’. Codling is all right cooked whole, however.
Another comment from Mrs Beeton is that fresh cod can be a little watery in the cooking. If you rub salt into it a couple of hours beforehand, it will stiffen and flavour it. In fact, I find most fish are improved by seasoning in advance, giving the salt time to penetrate. Obviously this works better with steaks and fillets than with whole, unskinned fish: even so, rubbing salt into the cleaned cavity and over the skin does help.
BERGEN FISH SOUP
This soup was the great delight of a trip we made several years ago now. We were part of a group of journalists from all over the world who were being taken to visit the salmon farms that are staked out in the narrows of the low rocky coast. In between lectures, there was some lovely food, especially one evening at the Royal Hotel, where