Baccalà

How to soak and poach salt cod, which every baccalà dish begins with.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 800 g salt cod, in a thick piece
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 onion
• a few peppercorns

Method

1. Rinse the surface salt off under a cold tap, scrubbing the skin side.
2. SOAK IT 48 HOURS in plenty of cold water in the fridge, CHANGING THE WATER SIX TIMES. The salt leaves by diffusion and stops once the water around it is as salty as the fish — a long soak in unchanged water does almost nothing after the first few hours.
3. A thick middle cut needs the full two days; a thin tail piece is ready in twenty-four hours. Taste a flake raw at the end: it should be pleasantly salty, not harsh.
4. To poach it, put it in cold water with the bay, onion and peppercorns and bring it to the point where the surface trembles.
5. TAKE IT OFF THE HEAT THERE AND LEAVE IT 10 MINUTES. It must not boil. Boiling drives the flakes apart and makes the cod stringy, and this fish has already been dried once.
6. ADD NO SALT AT ANY STAGE, including to the poaching water. The fish brings its own, and how much is unknowable until it is cooked.
7. Lift it out, peel the skin, and pick out the bones while it is warm. It keeps two days in the fridge under oil.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes