Brandade de morue

Salt cod and potatoes... it doesn't sound like much, unless you've tried it the Provencal way. 

I had always wondered what to do with those petrified pieces of fish I would see in Italian delis around Easter, as I love Chinese salted fish, but this was nothing like the xianyu that is used throughout the Chinese seaboard. 

And before I go any further, I have to let you know that salt cod is not in the least salty; in fact, it tastes very fresh, and I like it much better even than regular old cod, which can be a bit insipid unless it is dolled up with something like a Yunnan-style crunchy fried bean sauce. (More on that last recipe later.)

So, it was with great joy that I read in the brandade recipes by two of my favorite food writers - Patricia Wells and Simon Hopkinson - that the Provencal take on salt cod was one of their most beloved dishes. In fact, Mr. Hopkinson says in Roast Chicken and Other Stories that it is one of his top ten favorite dishes of all time.  

Then, when I read in Ms. Wells's Bistro Cooking that this was a specialty of Nimes, I knew that the time had finally come to try my hand at brandade de morue, the southern French concoction of reconstituted salt cod, mashed potatoes, olive oil, milk, and garlic, because that is the home town of two of our best friends from Taiwan, Lynn and Bill. 

Canadian cod, Catalan name, & French recipe

I made both recipes and enjoyed them the traditional way, smeared on crispy slabs of French bread and chased with some good red wine. But it got me thinking about how to adjust this recipe so that I could become even more thrilled.  

I think that it was the fact that the dish wasn't hot that made me yearn for something that approached "molten" on the heat scale, and I also wanted more variety in each mouthful, which would require some variations in texture and flavor. And while I was at it, I reduced the liquid a bit so that it ended up looking like a nice mound of mashed potatoes.

 After monkeying around with the recipes, I came up with  my own version, one that I now have to admit is really quite tasty and satisfying. Instead of the lukewarm though delicious fluff that appears to be the traditional way of serving it, I put it in a shallow pan and broiled it until the top was crispy and the fish was nice and hot. Also, I folded chopped parsley and a good handful of pitted olives into the fish, which provided nice contrasts in color and flavor.  This really needs the bite of olives to set off the comforting unctuousness of the rich mixture, and the green parsley conspires with the purple and pale green olives to spark up the visuals on this subdued dish.

Served with bread lightly fried in olive oil, a tossed green salad, a couple of steamed artichokes with garlic butter, and some red wine, this is a terrific Eastertime feast. Not much Lenten restraint here, but I'm sure I'll be forgiven.



Brandade de morue 
Toasted salt cod puree
France
Serves 6 to 8 as an entree for lunch or light supper

1 pound salt cod
¾ cup best quality olive oil
¾ cup whole milk or half-and-half
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
12 ounces Yukon gold potato(es)
Juice of 1 lemon (Meyer improved best) 
Lots of freshly ground black pepper
1 large bunch of parsley, trimmed and finely chopped
Handful of pitted black and/or green olives 
Sea salt to taste
12 to 16 thin slices of baguette or other firm, white bread
Olive oil for frying

Plumped up and ready to go

1. Start this recipe one or two days before you plan to serve it. Rinse off the cod and soak it in cold tap water for at least 24 hours, changing the water when you think of it and storing it covered in the refrigerator when you go to bed. After the first day, taste a little nibble of the fish to make sure it is no longer salty. The fish will be plump at this point, and you can store it one more day if you drain it and again refrigerate it in a covered container. Before you proceed with the recipe, remove any bones and skin. (Needle nose pliers are useful for this.)

2. About 30 minutes before you want to serve this (or earlier, as the finished dish can be refrigerated for a day or two prior to the final broiling), warm up the olive oil in the microwave or on the stove until it is about body temperature. Warm the milk and garlic together the same way, too.

Browned and bubbling

3. Peel the potato(es) and cut into 1-inch cubes. Boil the potato cubes in salted water until tender, drain thoroughly, and keep them warm in a toaster oven set on the lowest setting, which will dry them out a bit, too.  

4. Place the fish in a 1-quart saucepan, cover with cool tapwater, and bring it to a boil; lots of foam will rise to the surface. As soon as the water boils, remove the pan from the heat, cover it, and let the pan sit for 5 minutes. 

5. Drain the fish, rinse off any scum, and place the fish in a food processor. Pulse the fish until lightly chopped, and then pulse in the olive oil and milk mixtures to form what Simon Hopkinson calls "a thick, sloppy paste" - couldn't have said it better - adding more oil if it looks anything less than gloppy. Mash the potatoes with a fork or masher and then carefully pulse them into the fish; the potatoes want to turn into glue if given half a chance, so pulse them in rather than turn the machine on. Lightly pulse in the lemon juice, black pepper, parsley, and finally the olives so that they stay pretty much whole. Taste and add more salt, if needed. 

6. Spray or butter a shallow 10-inch round baking pan that can be used with a broiler. Spread the fish mixture evenly in the pan, but don't smooth down the top of the fish, since you want the tips to brown. Drizzle olive oil over the top and broil until the fish is golden brown and bubbling.

7. While the fish is broiling, fry the bread slices in olive oil until they too are golden and crispy. Serve them alongside the fish. To eat, just slather the brandade on the toasted bread and fly your way to Provencal heaven. Fry up more bread if your diners are ravenous.

Who needs the Easter Bunny when you've got salted cod?

Chinese comfort food at its best

My husband was but a little boy during the last painful spasms of the Chinese civil war, which were being fought against the even more atrocious background of  Japan's  nightmarish aggression against the Chinese during World War II.

His father was a colonel in the Nationalist air force, and as a result my husband spent most of his formative years in posts all over China, from Manchuria in the cold north to Sichuan in the tropical highlands near Burma, and every point in between.

One time  during the mid-forties his father was transferred to the southern coastal province of Guangzhou, and since he was finally back in his home province, his father built a house for the family that extended out over the Pearl River. 

This gorgeous house also just happened to be located across the huge river from a prison, where bound prisoners would occasionally be hauled out for the firing squad. Drowning victims would occasionally float by, too, and all of this was not so much frightening as terribly exciting to a little boy, in part because this constituted normality in a world ravaged by civil and world war. 

The bizarre and violent were everyday occurrences, so much so that the very first newspaper headline he remembers proudly reading aloud to his mother was “Changchun renrou shangshi” (human flesh being sold in Changchun). Horrified, his mother snatched the newspaper out of his hands, and since this four-year-old didn’t know the meaning of what he had read, he was confused at her lack of praise.

However, not all was macabre in his world. Every day small boats would punt by his family’s home, and he could reach down through a hole in their deck to buy a bowl of tingzai zhou, or sampan congee. This is a disarmingly simple dish that belies some pretty sophisticated ingredients: a piping hot rice porridge is poured over handfuls of perfectly cooked fish slices, whole shrimp, and calamari, all contrasting and yet in perfect harmony with chopped peanuts, fresh cilantro, and delicate slivers of ginger and green onion. It’s hard to believe that people actually cook this on little boats with not much more than simple charcoal braziers.

If any Chinese dish embodies pure comfort, it's congee, a word that really doesn't translate well. The reason for this is that "porridge" in English means something bland, probably with oatmeal, and served for breakfast. Either that or it has something to do with nursery rhymes. In any event, it doesn't summon up images of delightful, toe-warming goodness, scents of mushrooms and sweetly aromatic rice, and a savory broth.  Six decades later, this is still a dish that brings back strange and yet happy memories for my family, a delicious bowl of health and nutrition for even the most uncertain of times.

Truth be told, the inspiration for this recipe lies squarely with Simon Hopkinson, who has a delicious recipe for congee in his book, The Vegetarian Option. I will have to thank him personally for this one of these days... over countless years I've tried dozens of different ways to make the perfect bowl of congee, and he definitely showed me a particularly delicious way. Another version can be found here.



A perfect bowl of congee
Zhou  粥
Guangdong
Serves 2 generously with enough for seconds

Congee:

1 cup jasmine rice (white rice hands-down works better than brown here)           
6 to 8 cups stock of any kind
4 tablespoons rice wine
1 teaspoon light soy sauce, or to taste
4 green onions, tied into knots
1 thick, thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, smashed with the side of a cleaver

Garnishes (choose from any or all):
Lots of fried green onions (see the March 2010 post)
Some oil from the fried green onions
Stir-fried mushrooms, vegetables, meat, poultry, or fish
Eggs fried sunny-side up
Shredded green onions, chilies, cilantro, and/or ginger
Fried peanuts, slices of preserved eggs (pidan), or fermented bean curd
More soy sauce or some chili oil, roasted sesame oil, black pepper

1. Rinse the rice (if needed) until the water runs clear. Add it to a large, heavy stockpot with the stock, rice wine, soy sauce, onion, and ginger. Bring about 6 cups of the stock to a boil and then lower the heat to the very lowest setting. Stir the pot every 10 minutes or so and add water or stock as needed to both keep the rice floating in a pool of delicious flavors and to prevent it from sticking on the bottom. The rice will be ready after an hour or more when the grains have blossomed into soft little puffs, but don't overcook the rice to the point that it becomes gluey. It's important to be able to see each individual grain and to be able to feel them as they gracefully glide across your tongue. The most important key to a perfect bowl of congee is cooking it to the exact point of doneness -- everything else is secondary. Remove and discard the onions and ginger. Taste the congee and adjust the seasoning as needed.


2. Divide the congee into two large soup bowls, leaving enough room for a generous assortment of garnishes. If you want, let people decorate their own bowls. If you have any leftovers, microwave just before serving it so that the rice doesn't mush down as it heats.