Recipe for Bacalhau - a Portuguese specialty

[Michael; Camino-addicted]

Hola peregrinos,

when I was in Portugal for the first time in 2014, I fell in love the very first evening...........in Bacalhau.

I love this very traditional dish very much. And as I life in a big agglomeration with 5 million people, we have special supermarkets for people from all over the world - for Portuguese too.

When you are not a specialist for fish here are a few details about Bacalhau:
Bacalhau is the strongly salted cod you can see everywhere in Portugal and Spain. You can buy it "en block" or as a filet. Due to the salt, the structure changes in the protein of the fish and it tastes (for the Central European palate) quite unusual. It´s hard like a rock and you have to put it into water for 24 hours before preparing the meal.

In Redondela we slept in a privat Albergue and the owner asked, if she should cook a Portugues specilty for us. I was very happy, because it was clear - it could be only Bacalhau, and it was like this. I asked here to look over her shoulder to learn something new. She allowed me to write down the recipe (for 3 persons) in my camino diary

Ingredients
1kg Bacalhau (I use filet, much easier and little waste)
800g potatoes
2 big vegetable onions
2 big red vegetable peppers (in German: Paprika)
1 garlic clove
2 Ltrs milk
75ml dry white wine
2 bay leaves
olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley (perhaps chopped tomatoes)

Preparation

One day befor the meal

Rinse off as much salt as possible from the fish under running water, cut into portions und put the fish for 24 hours in water in the fridge, change the water minimum four times.

The day of the meal (you need round about 90 minutes)

• Peel the potatoes, cut into not too fine slices and store in a bowl with water.
• Remove the fish from the water, rinse, dry and remove the skin and all the little bones you can find.
• Put the milk in a pot and bring it to boil, add a bay leaf and cook the fish for 10 minutes.
• Prepare a casserole with a little bit olive oil.
• After the 10 minutes are over, remove the fish from the pot and put it in the casserole and give pepper as a spice on it.
• Then put the potatoes for around 20 minutes in the no longer boiling, but hot milk, till they are nearly done.
• In the meantime prepare the onions in rings and the vegetable peppers in stripes.
• Put the onion rings with another bay leaf und the very smal chopped garlic in a pan, give copius olive oil in it and let it be golden very slowly.
• Remove the potatoes from the pot and put it to the fish in the casserole.
• If the onions are golden, put the red peppers and the wine in addition in the pan (if you think its to dry, put chopped tomatoes in it) and let it cook strongly one time, and then, with less heat, till the oven is hot enough.
• Turn on the oven and bring it to 180 Celsius.
• Taste the onion-pepper-mix and put peffer as a spice in it, be careful with salt, the fish in the casserole has still enough salt, if necesarry you can give it to the meal, when its already served..
• Give the onion-pepper-mix to the fish and the potatoes in the casserole and give it for 30 Minutes in the oven.
• Serve it with chopped parsley

It´s a lot to do, and for sure nothing after a hard day of work, but if you have caminofriends as guests
it could bring you a little tear in their eyes.

All the best for you

Michael

 

[Vacajoe]

Excellent! Made me hungry to both eat that dish AND walk the Portuguese Way! An added bonus is that you are eating history: the cod was salted to preserve for the long ocean explorations.

 

[Michael; Camino-addicted]

Yes, it´s really excellent. And it was a brilliant evening in that Albergue with a few glasses of wine and many fun.

To translate the recipe to English was a little bit tricky, because we have in Germany three different names for three different thinks which are all translated in google with "pepper"

Paprika size of an appel
Peperoni size of a little finger, very hot
Pfeffer the spice to "sprinkle"

But I think, it´s clear what I mean.