This recipe needs a honking big casserole dish, long and deep. I did not have the aforementioned size, so I could not use all the required onions or potatoes – but it still was tasty, whew! I’d not ever cooked with salted cod, so this was an experience – I get a wee bit nervous when trying a new recipe and a new ingredient. The carnivore is a finicky eater, and if I am spending hours in the kitchen, cooking ahead for the week, on a Saturday – well, I want the results to be pleasing.
You will need:
- 2 pounds salted cod fish
- 5 large potatoes, peeled and sliced to 1/4 inch
- 3 large onions, sliced to 1/4 inch
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 2 cloves minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes, less or more to taste
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 small can (8 oz) tomato sauce
The day before…soak the salted cold overnight in cold water, in the refrigerator. You will want to ensure that the cod is fully covered with water, and that your soaking container is hermetically sealed in plastic wrap to avoid smelling up your refrigerator. Drain the water and repeat the next day, until ready to cook.
At this point, boil the cod for 5 minutes, drain, cool, break into large pieces and set it aside.
Then, when you are ready, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In your honking big casserole dish (my 9” x 13” x 3” was not deep enough), layer half the potatoes in a scallop pattern. Cover the potatoes with the cod, then layer in the onions, and top with the rest of the potatoes, again in a scallop pattern.
Mix together the olive oil, garlic, parsley, pepper flakes, paprika, and tomato sauce; pour/spread it over the layered cod/potatoes/onions.
Bake it for 45 minutes to one hour, depending on your oven. It makes a ton of food – we will get three meals from this recipe.
When I bought the cod I was starting to think this was a mistake. It was huge. Who eats that much salted cod? This is not Colonial times. Needless to say it was very good and we had leftovers. As far as finicky I would use “refined” instead.
@KeitelBlacksmith, that link is why I have nightmares.
That stuffing recipe does look hideous.
That seems like a very Hawaiian recipe, or maybe “Polynesian” in the Trader Vic’s sense, meaning found nowhere in Polynesia but popular among mainland Americans who imagine it to be fun and exotically Polynesian.
Oh my God. This is right up my alley. Is there a reason why you didn’t use more garlic? It has health-giving properties, you know. For this amount I would have quadrupled the minced garlic. Maybe the cod is salty and flavorful enough. But I throw garlic in wherever I can. Neither we nor the Faithful Hound have been bitten by a vampire yet!
Oh, a little piece of trivia. During the medieval plagues Europe (there were more than one, but the Great Plague took away as much as 1/3 of the population by some estimates) and it set back Western European human civilization by centuries. To deal with this, plague houses were set up and people were confined therein. This was a charitable act, not punitive. To confine the plague, people would drop off onions or garlic (depending on where they were) on the doorstep in the hope that it wouldn’t spread. Problem was, this attracted the rodents whose parasites were carrying the plague, so the Law of Unintended Consequences kicked in.
Speaking of the plague, this is a very funny (and very blasphemous) video, but we’re past Lent and Easter:
@MatthewCrawley, the Law of Unintended Consequences, sort of like being a Republican and getting caught at (enter scummy action here).
I will eat this baccala any time, any place.