OMEHOW I TOTALLY forgot that it’s Lent. Must be because I forgot to observe Mardi Gras. (I didn’t forget about St. Patrick’s Day; I just didn’t feel like eating any of that stuff.) I’m a pretty big fan of Lent, inasmuch as I love to make grandiose resolutions and renunciations and then to renege on them a few days later. On January 1, for instance, I swore I would cook something every day. You know how far I got with that.
I remembered that it was Lent when my mom sent me this boring old-tymey poem. (Of course, as holiday-related email forwards go, you could do a whole lot worse.) I direct the reader to the lines: “Is it to quit the dish/ Of flesh, yet still/ To fill/ The platter high with fish?” In the deathless words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “No shit, Sherlock.” What better time than Lent to finally try one of the great-looking baccalà—that is, salt cod—recipes for which I’ve been hanging on to the November 2009 issue of La Cucina Italiana?
La Cucina notes that “Italy’s appetite for this preserved cod was initially fueled by Catholicism because, prior to the 20th century, Catholics were forbidden meat for nearly half the year, including Fridays, Lent, Advent, Ember days, Christmas and Assumption. In need of a cheap, nutritious source of protein, salt cod filled the void perfectly.” Yikes, I’ve never even heard of “Ember days.” My impossibly bizarre former TNC colleague, living anachronism Andrew Cusack, probably could explain that one. (He would probably take exception to that “prior to the 20th century” bit.)
I selected the baccalà alla portoghese, as it required the fewest and cheapest ingredients, and hit the supermarket. I was surprised to learn that salt cod really isn’t super cheap: I think it was around eleven bucks for 1.1 pounds. (The recipe calls for 1 1/3 pounds, but it’s not an exact science, and I wasn’t about to buy a second package to make up the difference.) The bag boy was pretty stoked about my purchase, and waved the salty brick in the Jamaican cashier’s face: “Look, look, they have the baccalà fish!” To me: “Do you soak it?”
I nodded. I’d never made it before, and wasn’t aware of an alternative to soaking it, but I wanted to seem like I knew what was up. For the record, I’m pretty sure you have to soak it. I soaked mine for three days, changing the water three or four times each day. At the end I was worried that I’d eradicated all traces of saltiness, but I was seriously mistaken. Make sure you’ve got plenty of beverages handy for this meal—cold tap water, I guess, this being Lent and all. I won’t recap the recipe—just click the link above—but I will offer a couple caveats: 1) Where it says to “layer” the ingredients, “toss” really makes more sense; 2) You won’t need additional salt; 3) Don’t chew up a whole clove. It’s like biting into a weird mentholated twig.
If this is Lenten privation, I’m having seconds.
