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While the cod and potatoes cool, stew the onion and shallots in half the butter until yellow and tender. Stir in the parsley and seasoning.

Roll out half the pastry to fit a 25-cm (10-inch) tart tin. Pile on the cod and potato in layers, interspersed with the onion and shallot mixture. Brush the pastry rim with water.

Roll out the remaining pastry large enough to make a lid. Cut a 4-cm (1½-inch) hole from the centre. Put the lid in place, pressing down the edges closely together. Decorate or score as you please. Brush over the top with a little of the cream. Chill half an hour, together with the circle cut from the lid.

Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220°C (425°F). When the temperature is set, slip in a baking sheet. Give it 3 or 4 minutes to heat up, then put the tart on the baking sheet. Place the circle of pastry beside it. Bake for 15 minutes, check the browning of the pastry and remove the circle if it is done. Give the tart another 15 minutes, lowering the heat if necessary.

Remove to a hot serving dish. Pour the rest of the cream into the pie through the central hole. Put on the circle of pastry and serve.

SALT COD FRITTERS

The kite-shaped boards of salt cod hanging from the fishmonger’s hooks look far too unyielding and dry for fritters. In fact, they work quite well (especially if you use only the thickest part) but results will be even better if you use the undried salt cod that you buy in packages. Be sure to soak the fish well. You do not need to cook it, but I think that the result is a little better if you give it 5 minutes’ gentle simmering. Then drain and cool it.

Cod’s cheeks or tongues are good for tiny fritters: soak well and cook briefly as above.

Serves 6

750 g (1½ lb) salt cod, soaked

batter with beaten egg white*

SERVE WITH:

lemon quarters

or skordalia and beetroot salad, p. 232

or tomato sauce* plus a chopping of walnuts, black olives and capers

or tomato and red pepper salad

or mayonnaise*

or mayonnaise derivatives – tartare, aioli, anchovy, etc.

Simmer the fish for up to 5 minutes in water (or use half water, half milk). It should be just tender enough to eat with pleasure. After removing bones and, if you like, any skin, drain and dry it extremely carefully. Cut it into roughly 5-cm (2-inch) pieces.

Make the batter and the sauce or salad before you start deep-frying the cod. Have everyone sitting ready, as fritters are best from the pan.

Heat the oil to 180°C (350°F). Dip each piece in the batter and deep-fry. Be careful not to overload the pan. When the batter coating is crisp and a deep golden colour, the fritters are done.

SALTFISH AND AKEE

One of the great dishes of salt cod cookery from Jamaica is worth making in quantity since the left-overs taste so good served in the halves of a very ripe breadfruit baked in buttered foil in the oven. Or it can be used as a stuffing for some of the livelier squashes, crooknecks or patty pans. Or as a filling for pasties and little tarts.

Akee, which we have to buy in tins, in Britain at any rate, looks like heaped billows of scrambled egg. The texture is soft and succulent. Ask anybody what it is and they would be pushed to give you an answer. And when you tell them the answer, they might well be keen to avoid it. Akee is properly the name of a tree, originally from West Africa, that was introduced to Jamaica from Guinea by Captain Bligh of the Bounty at the end of the eighteenth century. Hence its botanic name, Blighia sapida. The fruits are red and warty. When fully ripe, they burst open to show round black seeds, like berries, each one reposing in a creamy yellow cushion, a surreal padded egg cup – the aril – which is the part you eat. But, and this is quite a ‘but’, unless the fruit has ‘ripened to the point of voluntary opening, it is a deadly poison. No overly ripe, fallen, discoloured or unripe fruit dare be eaten,’ (I quote from The Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Beck) ‘and the greatest care must be used to remove all seeds before cooking as these are always