On what I did with salt cod.
Mar. 23rd, 2006 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, this is one of those stories which I'm not sure if it belongs in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
failed_recipe or food_porn, so I'm just posting it here in my own LJ.
About a week ago, I was in the supermarket, and I saw that they were selling salt cod. You know the stuff -- codfish that's preserved in salt, so that it will last for years and years, without refrigeration. It's one of those foods that was real common before refrigeration -- it drove the colonization of the northern parts of the New World.
And, heck, I thought to myself, let's see what we can do with this.
First, I was surprised by how floppy it was when I took it out of the package. I thought salt cod was dried hard -- and, looking online, it apparently usually is -- but this stuff was kind of floppy. A different salt-curing process? Actually, I wonder if this was sold pre-soaked. In any case, it smelled fine -- slightly fishy, but not more than usual fish.
I put it in a big bowl, filled the bowl with water, and put it in the fridge to soak for a couple days. You're really supposed to change the water every so often, but I simply put a LOT of water in to start with, to get most of the salt out -- and, if the stuff was pre-soaked, it needed less soaking, anyway.
I decided that I wanted to make fish cakes. 'Cause that's a good use of salt cod. Obviously, even with soaking, salt cod is going to be, y'know, salty, so you have to cut it with other stuff to cut down the salt -- potatoes.
(Although I've got to admit -- I started wondering what would happen if I used turnips, parsnips, and so forth as mixers with it . . .)
And, since the whole thing is going to be mushed up, anyway, I figured I could just use some of the instant mashed potato flakes that we have. Yes, this was the "mistake" part of the recipe, but not for any of the really horrific reasons you might be thinking.
I started by putting the salt cod in the food processor, and processing it to fish paste. I don't usually like fish, but it actually smelled really good -- I tasted some, and it tasted good, too, if very salty. I wonder about how safe tasting it was, but, heck, it's preserved in salt -- what pathogens could survive that?
Then I added in potato flakes, and blended them around, too, adding some milk to moisten the flakes, and it turned into a rather wonderful silky texture, which was still sticky enough to make good cakes. And I tasted it again. And it was still too salty. So I added some more potato flakes, and a bit more milk, and it was STILL too salty.
Then I looked at the box of potato flakes, and realized that the second ingredient was salt.
THAT was the reason that this was the "mistake" part of the recipe. The texture worked out fine.
So I boiled a bunch of potatoes, moved the fish-and-instant-potato mush to a mixing bowl, put the potatoes in the food processor, blended them smooth, and put the fish-mush back in, and blended it all together again.
The proportions were about 1 part salt cod, 1 part instant mashed, and 1 part actual potatoes.
I make the mush into patties, coated them in matzah meal, because that's what we had around instead of bread crumbs, and baked them.
They turned out . . . moderately okay. The matzah meal didn't really brown up, so they weren't pretty, and they were still far too salty.
So, the next day, I took our big soup pot, chopped up an onion and sauteed it in the pot, mushed all the fish cakes around in the pot, and used it as a basis for fish chowder.
A smooth fish chowder instead of chunky, like chowder is SUPPOSED to be. So this was actually a smooth potato-and-fish based soup.
Yes, I actually made fischyssoise.
Our upstairs neighbor posted to her livejournal that something smelled really good from downstairs, so I'm counting it as a success. It tastes pretty good, although I don't like fish, so it's hard for me to judge.
failed_recipe or food_porn, so I'm just posting it here in my own LJ.About a week ago, I was in the supermarket, and I saw that they were selling salt cod. You know the stuff -- codfish that's preserved in salt, so that it will last for years and years, without refrigeration. It's one of those foods that was real common before refrigeration -- it drove the colonization of the northern parts of the New World.
And, heck, I thought to myself, let's see what we can do with this.
First, I was surprised by how floppy it was when I took it out of the package. I thought salt cod was dried hard -- and, looking online, it apparently usually is -- but this stuff was kind of floppy. A different salt-curing process? Actually, I wonder if this was sold pre-soaked. In any case, it smelled fine -- slightly fishy, but not more than usual fish.
I put it in a big bowl, filled the bowl with water, and put it in the fridge to soak for a couple days. You're really supposed to change the water every so often, but I simply put a LOT of water in to start with, to get most of the salt out -- and, if the stuff was pre-soaked, it needed less soaking, anyway.
I decided that I wanted to make fish cakes. 'Cause that's a good use of salt cod. Obviously, even with soaking, salt cod is going to be, y'know, salty, so you have to cut it with other stuff to cut down the salt -- potatoes.
(Although I've got to admit -- I started wondering what would happen if I used turnips, parsnips, and so forth as mixers with it . . .)
And, since the whole thing is going to be mushed up, anyway, I figured I could just use some of the instant mashed potato flakes that we have. Yes, this was the "mistake" part of the recipe, but not for any of the really horrific reasons you might be thinking.
I started by putting the salt cod in the food processor, and processing it to fish paste. I don't usually like fish, but it actually smelled really good -- I tasted some, and it tasted good, too, if very salty. I wonder about how safe tasting it was, but, heck, it's preserved in salt -- what pathogens could survive that?
Then I added in potato flakes, and blended them around, too, adding some milk to moisten the flakes, and it turned into a rather wonderful silky texture, which was still sticky enough to make good cakes. And I tasted it again. And it was still too salty. So I added some more potato flakes, and a bit more milk, and it was STILL too salty.
Then I looked at the box of potato flakes, and realized that the second ingredient was salt.
THAT was the reason that this was the "mistake" part of the recipe. The texture worked out fine.
So I boiled a bunch of potatoes, moved the fish-and-instant-potato mush to a mixing bowl, put the potatoes in the food processor, blended them smooth, and put the fish-mush back in, and blended it all together again.
The proportions were about 1 part salt cod, 1 part instant mashed, and 1 part actual potatoes.
I make the mush into patties, coated them in matzah meal, because that's what we had around instead of bread crumbs, and baked them.
They turned out . . . moderately okay. The matzah meal didn't really brown up, so they weren't pretty, and they were still far too salty.
So, the next day, I took our big soup pot, chopped up an onion and sauteed it in the pot, mushed all the fish cakes around in the pot, and used it as a basis for fish chowder.
A smooth fish chowder instead of chunky, like chowder is SUPPOSED to be. So this was actually a smooth potato-and-fish based soup.
Yes, I actually made fischyssoise.
Our upstairs neighbor posted to her livejournal that something smelled really good from downstairs, so I'm counting it as a success. It tastes pretty good, although I don't like fish, so it's hard for me to judge.