Home › Fish and Shellfish › Codfish
Codfish
(Baccalà) I Freshen and soak the codfish in cold water, changing the water two or three times, or, better, keeping it for some time in a vase under running cold water. Then cut it into pieces as large as the palm of the hand and dip them in flour until they are well covered. Then put a kettle or a saucepan on the fire with plenty of oil and two or three cloves of garlic, whole but a little crushed. When the garlic begins to brown put in the codfish and brown it on both sides, stirring it often, so that it doesn't burn. Salt is not necessary, or at least only a little after tasting, but a little pepper will not be amiss. Finally pour over some tomato sauce (No. 12) or tomato paste diluted in water, let it boil a little more and serve.
The following is another way to prepare the codfish, slightly different from the preceding.
Cut the codfish as above, then put it as it is in saucepan with some olive oil. Spread over it a hash of garlic and parsley and season with a pinch of pepper, oil and little pieces of butter.
Cook on a good fire and turn it with care, because, not being sprinkled with flour, it breaks easily. When it is cooked, squeeze a lemon over and serve. 124
Two versions of fried salt cod, one finished in tomato, one with parsley, garlic and lemon. Everything depends on the soaking, which the original treats as obvious.
- Soaking is the whole recipeHard-dried salt cod needs 24 to 48 hours in cold water, with the water changed three or four times; thick loin pieces may want longer. Do it in the refrigerator rather than on the counter, and taste a corner of the raw fish at the end — it should read as seasoned, not salty. The original's alternative of leaving it under running cold water is wasteful now, and repeated changes of water do the same job.
- "Vase"A translation of vaso, meaning simply a deep vessel or basin, not a decorative vase. Any non-reactive bowl or plastic tub large enough to hold the fish fully submerged will do.
- Buying itLook for baccalà (salted, dried) rather than stoccafisso (air-dried, unsalted stockfish), which is far harder and needs days of pounding and soaking. Wet-salted cod sold in tubs at Italian and Portuguese shops is already partly rehydrated and may need only 12 to 24 hours.
- "Plenty of oil"This is shallow-frying, not deep-frying: about half an inch of olive oil in a wide pan, hot enough that the flour sets on contact, around 350F. Dry the pieces thoroughly before flouring or the coating slides off.
- The garlicWhole crushed cloves perfume the oil. The original leaves them in when the fish goes in, but they can be lifted out once golden if you prefer, since garlic burnt in frying oil will carry a bitter note through the finished dish.
- SaltArtusi's warning still holds. Add none until the dish is finished and tasted, and be careful with the tomato as well, since commercial passata and paste are often salted.
- Tomato sauce No. 12A cross-reference to the book's plain tomato sauce, given elsewhere in the volume. A good passata simmered a few minutes with oil and basil substitutes cleanly. Add only enough to coat the fish; this is not a stew.
- The second methodWithout flour the fish is fragile, so turn it once with a wide spatula rather than stirring, and use a pan wide enough that the pieces are not crowded. The lemon goes on off the heat, as the recipe says.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Figure about 6 oz of soaked fish per person, which means roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of dried cod for four. Serve with boiled potatoes, chickpeas or plain bread.
Baccalà is salt cod, and its presence in an Italian cookbook is a reminder that the fish itself never came from Italian waters — cod is a North Atlantic species, salted and dried by Basque, Portuguese, Norwegian and later Newfoundland fishermen and shipped south in enormous quantities from the sixteenth century onward. Because it kept without ice and was cheap, it became the standard fish of inland Italy and of the meatless days of the Catholic calendar, which is why nearly every region has its own version: baccalà alla vicentina with milk and onion, baccalà alla livornese with tomato, the Roman fried fillets sold from street counters. The two preparations here map onto that divide — one tomato-based, the other a plainer treatment with parsley, garlic, butter and lemon. This English-language Italian Cook Book is often said to draw on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891), and the terse, conversational voice, the aside that salt is not necessary, and the cross-reference to a numbered tomato sauce are all characteristic of him.