Salt cod

Morue salée

What it is

Basque crews were working the Newfoundland banks by the early sixteenth century and salted their catch aboard, because the damp air there made the Norwegian trick of simply drying it in the wind impossible. Salt cod then fed Catholic Europe through every lean Friday of the year — a fish caught in one hemisphere and eaten in another, centuries before refrigeration.

In the kitchen

Desalt it skin up in cold water in the fridge — 24 hours for the soft pale cure, 48 for the hard yellow one — changing the water four or five times. Taste a shred before you commit: over-salted brandade cannot be rescued.

Goes with

Potato Olive oil Garlic Cream Parsley Piquillo pepper Onion Bay leaf

Same species

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

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