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Fish Hash
Take equal parts of cold flaked fish and cold boiled potatoes finely chopped. Season with salt and pepper. Try out fat salt pork, remove scraps, leaving enough fat in pan to moisten fish and potatoes. Put in fish and potatoes, stir until heated, then cook until well browned underneath; fold, and turn like an omelet.
A leftovers dish that lives or dies on the crust. The method is the same as a potato hash, with cold cooked fish standing in for corned beef.
- "Try out fat salt pork"Dice about 2 oz salt pork and render it slowly over medium-low heat until the cubes are crisp and have given up their fat; those cubes are the "scraps," removed and either discarded or scattered back over the finished hash. Two to three tablespoons of fat left in the pan is enough. Bacon works if salt pork is unavailable, though it brings smoke the original does not have.
- Do not stir once it is spreadThis is the hinge. Stir only long enough to heat the mixture through, then press it flat and leave it alone until a crust forms underneath, roughly 8-10 minutes over medium heat. Every stir after that breaks the crust that is forming and you end up with fish-and-potato porridge.
- Fish to useThe recipe names no species: cold flaked white fish such as cod, haddock or pollock, usually left from a boiled or baked fish dinner, is the obvious fit. Salmon works. Strongly oily fish such as mackerel turns assertive when refried.
- Potato texture"Finely chopped" cold boiled potatoes, not mashed. A firmer, waxier boiling potato holds its edges; a very floury baker will collapse into paste. Chill them thoroughly first.
- Salt with restraintSalt pork fat, salt-cured or boiled fish, and salted potato water all contribute. The recipe seasons the mixture before it goes in the pan, so go lightly and taste as you go.
- Folding itA 10-inch skillet and a wide spatula make the omelet-style fold possible; the hash will still crack, which is normal. If it seems fragile, slide it onto a plate and invert it browned-side up instead.
- YieldTwo cups fish and two cups potato will serve three to four. Often eaten at breakfast, with a poached egg and ketchup or a vinegar-based sauce.
Fish hash belongs to the New England economy of the boiled dinner, where cooked fish and potatoes left from one meal reappeared at breakfast. Salt cod was the region's staple protein for generations, cheap, storable, and shipped out of Gloucester and Boston in enormous quantity, and any household that boiled it had cold flakes to use up. Entries of this kind are typical of the book: no yield, no timing, a few lines assuming the cook already knows what browned hash looks like. The salt pork "tried out" for its fat is the older American frying medium, standard in kitchens well before commercial vegetable shortening took over in the early twentieth century.