Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [53]
Serves 6
¾-1 kg (1½–2 lb) dried salt cod
500–600 ml (1 pt) olive oil
1 large clove garlic, crushed, finely chopped (optional)
300 ml (10 fl oz) single cream or milk and cream
salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice
18 small triangles of bread fried in olive oil
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
Soak the cod and cook it in the usual way. Remove and discard all bony parts, but keep the skin. This is often discarded, but as Ali-Bab remarks in his Gastronomie Pratique, it helps the flavour and the consistency of the brandade, being gelatinous.
Put the pieces of cod, and skin if used, into a stoneware or enamelled iron casserole, over a low, steady heat (with a heat-diffuser mat underneath, if gas is used). Have the oil, and garlic if used, together in a small pan, keeping warm. The same goes for the cream or milk and cream. Pour a little oil on to the cod, and crush the two together with a wooden spoon, moving the pan about. Then add some cream, or milk and cream. Continue in this way until oil and cream are finished. You should now have a coherent creamy mass, very white if you have omitted the skin, white flecked with grey if you haven’t. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and lemon juice.
The thing to avoid is overheating, which could cause the brandade to separate. Should this happen, take the unorthodox step of putting the mixture into a bowl and beating it vigorously and, if possible, electrically. Or use the processor.
Serve either in the cooking dish (though this will probably be too large), or on a plainly coloured earthenware dish. Dip one corner of each triangle of fried bread first in the brandade, and then into the parsley, before tucking the croûton into the edge of the brandade as a garnish.
Any left over can be reheated another day, and served in tiny pastry cases. Or it can be made into little cakes – bind it with one or two eggs – dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.
NEW ENGLAND SALT COD DINNER
This kind of food is only good if it is properly done. You need to feel that it is something to relax over when you are really hungry and the weather is cold. The temptation is to cook the vegetables in a muddle, all together (except the beetroot of course) which usually means that nothing is quite right. The trickiest part for a cook in Britain will be finding salt belly of pork: fat green streaky bacon can be substituted, though these days you are most likely to get a watery fluid from it than proper fat.
Alan Davidson gives a very similar recipe to this one in North Atlantic Seafood. His version adds carrots, and substitutes egg sauce for parsley sauce.
Serves 6
750 g (1½ lb) salt cod, soaked, simmered until just tender
6 potatoes, boiled in their skins
6 boiled onions
12 small beetroot, baked in foil in the oven or boiled
parsley sauce made with cream*
175 g (6 oz) skinned salt pork, diced small
When the cod and vegetables are all ready, arrange them on a hot serving plate – skin the beetroot first, and the potatoes if you like. Keep them warm. Reheat the sauce and pour it into a jug.
Last of all, fry the salt pork in a heavy pan so that the fat runs from it and the little bits turn brown and crisp. Pour into a small hot jug, for people to help themselves, or else pour over the fish.
NEWFOUNDLANDERS’ PIE (Tourte des Terre-Neuvas)
As one reads in Pierre Loti’s novel (see Cod Introduction), the men who went fishing to Icelandic waters were known as les islandais, the Icelanders. Others who went to Newfoundland were les Terre-Neuvas, and this is their recipe. I would say a dish for rejoicing when – if – they returned home in September.
Serves 6
500 g (1 lb) salt cod, soaked, simmered
375 g (12 oz) boiled potatoes, peeled, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
3 shallots, chopped
125 g (4 oz) butter
3–4 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt, pepper
750-g (1½ -lb) piece of puff pastry
250 ml (8