Cod tongues ✦

Langues de morue

What it is

Cod tongues are the same throat muscle the Basques call kokotxa, and on Newfoundland wharves cutting them out of the day's catch was children's work, paid by the bucket. Almost everything sold in Europe is salt-cured, so it comes home stiff as card and has to be soaked back before it can be cooked at all.

In the kitchen

Desalt twenty-four hours in the fridge in three changes of cold water, then dry, flour and fry in pork fat until the edges blister. Taste the soaking water before you stop — if it is still salty, so is the tongue.

Goes with

T55 flour Potato Olive oil Garlic Lemon Parsley Fatback (green back fat) Pimentón de la Vera

Same species

Cod Cod liver Hwangtae (freeze-dried pollack) Mentaiko Salt cod Smoked cod roe

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