Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [52]
375 g (12 oz) preserved red peppers, drained, sliced
16–20 green olives
2 teaspoons sugar
salt, pepper
Remove any bones from the fish and flake it. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or earthenware dish and fry the garlic until it is deep brown. Scoop out and discard the garlic. Put in the onion. Lower the heat and cook gently until it is transparent. Add the fish and stir together for a minute or so. Next, put in the parsley sprigs, then the tomato – if the sauce looks sinister at this point, don’t worry as it comes out all right in the end. Simmer for 15 minutes. Add the peppers and olives. Simmer again until the fish is tender and the sauce blended – about 30 minutes. Sprinkle on the sugar and taste for seasoning.
Serve hot with a risotto (saffron risotto makes a fine contrast) or cold with a rice salad.
BACALHAU À BRAS
This much-loved dish of the vast salt cod repertoire of Portugal is a winner. It is savoury and unusual – to the Anglo-Saxon experience at least – and completely delicious with its balance of cod and potatoes, egg and olives. If you are feeling hard up, increase the potatoes and decrease the cod. The name puzzled me, but apparently it is the inventor. Blessings on Mr Bras!
Serves 8–9
1 kg (2 lb) salt cod, well soaked or 750 g (1½ lb) salt cod cheeks
1 kg (2 lb) potatoes, peeled
groundnut or sunflower oil for deep-frying
500 g (1 lb) onions, sliced
4 tablespoons olive oil
175 g (6 oz) butter
1 large clove garlic, sliced
salt, pepper
12 large eggs, beaten
1 small bunch parsley, chopped
24–30 black olives
Flake and cut the cod into rough strips, discarding any bone. Shred the potatoes into matchsticks and deep-fry them until they are soft and lightly coloured but not brown and crisp like chips. Drain well.
Soften the onion in the olive oil and a third of the butter over a low heat. Add the garlic and cook a little faster so that the onion is nicely caught with brown in an appetizing manner: do not overheat the fat or it will burn. Add the fish and continue cooking for another 5 or 6 minutes, stirring often. Add seasoning, then put the whole thing into a bowl and mix in the potatoes. All this can be done an hour or two in advance.
For the final stages, you need two large sauté pans – another solution, better from the point of view of flavour, is to cook a generous half of the mixture, then the rest for second helpings.
Melt the remaining butter and stir in the fish and potato to heat through. Pour in the beaten egg and go on stirring until the whole thing is bound lightly – do not overcook. Turn on to a warm dish, sprinkle with parsley, decorate with the olives and serve.
BRANDADE DE MORUE
Brandade has had its devotees ever since Grimod de la Reynière ‘discovered’ it in Languedoc and wrote down the recipe at the end of the eighteenth century. He concealed the name of the place where he first ate this cream of salt cod, which has led to much pleasurable but fruitless speculation. (Like Lobster à l’américaine – or armoricaine.) Was the place Béziers, the ancient cathedral town between Sète and Narbonne? Or was it Nîmes, where one cooked food shop at least sends brandade to customers all over France? To add to the mystery, an almost identical dish, baccalà mantecato, is a great speciality of Venice and the Veneto.
Brandade is a fascinating dish to make. Poor-looking greyish-white boards of dried cod are transformed into richness by the gentle attentions of olive oil and cream. Less gentle are the attentions of the cook, who must keep up a steady crushing of the ingredients, combined with a shaking of the pot (the name is said – by Grimod de la Reynière – to come from brandir, an old verb meaning to stir, shake and crush with energy, for a long time: one may wonder on what other occasion it might have been employed). Such a slow transformation of substances may sound tiresome in a busy life, but it has its own relaxed pleasure, and a delicious result. A consolation – fruit is the only possible follow-up. The