Recipe #3: 'Salt Cod and Beans' (page 139)

Consecutive pages bring like ingredients.  I chose to run on with this one due to a number of factors.  I had an impromptu dinner guest planned a night before so I wanted to try and please their palate as much as my own.  Also my previous experience with salt cod was interesting and enjoyable enough to dive right back into it.

Starting with the beans, I was unable to source any haircot variety so I went with navy again.  I wanted a similarly tinted (white) bean and I felt comfortable with it from my first recipe ('Beans and Bacon').  This recipe interestingly has a subtle higher attention to detail in the preperation of the legumes than in that previous dish.  I chose to heed the call and add unpeeled garlic and bay to the cooking water.  Fergus would have prefered I use an entire head as per usual; I felt this was a bit much and also did not have enough to go around for all needs in that night's dinner.  I have never tampered with bay before, but I did procure some dry variety (was unable to locate fresh in time, though I do see it once in a while).  It's tea like aroma was far from overt in the final sampling but certainly provided an unseen push.  Again the recipe calls for 2 hours cooking (plus the obvious and necessary pre-night's soaking) which seemed to be and then proved to be excessive.  After about one hour I tested and felt they were done, and drained.  Interestingly enough, another contrast to the preperation of recipe #1 previously mentioned, this recipe calls for an immedate drain rather then to let them dwell in their liquor.  I would have kept the liquid, reserved for possible later use but with the use of the wrong pot (and lack of hardware in general) I needed to immediately wash and reuse the vessel for the next steps so I drained it to the municipal plumbing.

I set the cleaned pot back onto the fire and began with my now prepped aromatic veg.  Another rookie in my kitchen was fennel.  Labeled as anise at my local grocery I did visually identify it but still wondered if this was the guilty culprit or a similar cousin.  I sniffed at its exterior (it gave no clues) then inquired with an employee who pointed that it was 'next to the brocolli raab'.  Anise it is.

I predicted correctly that Fergus' typical slow and pleasant heating would decimate these parts of the product and was correct: I only sliced the fennel as discs from the bulb.  I left the 3 small onions I used in like sizes arcs.  I diced 4-5 cloves garlic (and also ate one of the poached cloves from the bean liquid - soft and delicious) but forgot to add them straight away, they did jump into the pool later.

Before any of this touched the pyre however my sausage went to town and this deserves and requires a substantial backstory.  The recipe calls for "1 3/4 pounds fresh chorizo, a variety suitable for cooking, sliced into 1/2 inch thick rounds".  I do have experience with chorizo and it comes in three distinct forms that I have either encountered or at least are aware of:

1) Cured as any other salumi.  Hard and dry, excellent for snacking, espically when combined with cheese/crackers and oceans of beer
2) Raw and loose without casing.  The local Mexican population makes this product available even at the largest commercial grocery stores
3) Same as #2 but cased as any other sausage (Italian, Polish, etc...)

I pondered this at length as I completed my daily tasks at work, my mind elsewhere and obsessing over seasoned, ground meats.  The key words in the recipe's description are 'fresh' and 'sliced'.  The two are nearly mutually exclusive in my experience.  I cook traditional red beans and rice with the stereotypical Cajun twist often using dried beans and Kielbasa.  Kielbasa is a smoked Polish sausage.  As it has been cured with smoke it takes on a wonderful 'snap' even before cooked which makes it quite choppable.  Other cased meats are not nearly as sliceable and most are aware of this.  Raw ground meat obviously cannot be kept in the delicious rewarding discs that swim in my red beans and rice.  Natural, uncooked casings are as pliable and difficult to cut as a tomato's unripe skin.  I began to think that perhaps I was to use the salumi style as describe in #1 above? This is not common but I have come across it long in the past, but I knew I had no chance to attain it in time for the nights cookery.  And still I wondered if this was what was intended and more importantly even what woudl work best, if at all? Even cased chorizo I knew I would have to travel to stores with a better and Latin influenced butcher to purchase, the uncased fresh variety seemed to be the most sensible and definately easiest to get my hands on.

In the end I made the decision to seek out a proper Mexican butcher and I found an excellent one.  I refered to a book I have long owned and turned to in such situations: 'A Cook's Guide to Chicago'. 

'Chorizo de casa' - chorizo of the house - homemade chorizo is what I bought and what a beauty it was!

Ignorantly I had forgotten to bring my knife to work for sharpening on the bench grinder so I used a small Kuhn Ricon paring knife with ceramic blade to try and cleanly chop through the sausage.  I was further opposed by the fact that this sausage was packed a bit on the loose side.  At the end of the night I realized that perhaps I could have allievated this a bit by actually twisting and tightening up the guts of my casings but who knows if this would have helped.

I attempted to brown the pieces but likely overcrowded the pot.  And even if I had been more studious in that regard chorizos copious red grease flowed forth like a flood.  I drained it off and the sausage began to fall apart.  This did not bother me that much as some pieces did hold together well and even though I realized buying the much more local uncased variety would have worked as well, there is no way that factory made product could match the quality of this small batch house made version.

When my sausage took on some color and gave up much of its liquid in went my onion and fennel.  As those became stained with the chorizo's trademarked maroon hue tomatoes followed next.  I particularly looked forward to this step for a few reasons.  As I mentioned in my 'Beans and Bacon' recipe I really enjoyed the addition of tomatoes to that dish although at that time it seemed odd at first.  Second of all rather then buy one of the excellent whole, peeled tins available I used a 2008 vintage Mason jar of the same, prepared and grown by my own grandmother, now deceased.  When she would jar, some would end up as simple tomatoes in their water while others had onion and green pepper added.  I did not realize this is what I had until shortly before they went in, so this added variation to the dish benefitted all, not least my grandmother's memory.  Worthy of mention also that just before the tomatoes entered the picture I noticed that I had built up a delicious fond on the bottom of my pot.  While likely the tomatoes would have cleaned that up I decided to take matters a bit more seriously and complete a full deglaze.  As I rifled through my cabinets thinking along the lines of vinegar my mate suggested beer.  This had initially entered my mind but we were drinking a growler of local beer of the chocolate influenced variety: a horrible bedfellow to the contents of my pot.  However we did have a few cans of a much lower quality (but endearing in its own way) beer: Special Export.  A few ounces went in and it tore away the delicious burned bits; as I portioned off the remains the next morning I found a wildly intoxicating and intense new black fond around the edge of the pot which I gobbled up cold, even scraping at it with a butter knife.  I am not sure exactly which ingredient(s) were responsible for the continued construction of this caramelized material but the chorizo certainly must have had a hand.  What a gift!

As this began to reduce and really look delicious, I realized that I had forgotten to add my chopped garlic with the other veg so in it went.  Fergus is vague with what herbs to use and as I've said before, I go my own route with herbs in any situation.  I had a good amount of beautiful and very healthy fresh rosemary left from my previous recipe so I went for it again.  Finally I tipped in about 2 cups of my own homemade chicken stock.  Fergus calls for a full quart but as I added and inspected that seemed wildly excessive.

As that perked away a number of additional drinks entered my system and more hours ticked away.  It was nearly 2am when myself and my guest were ready for our meal so I finally added my wonderful salt cod to the already simmering water.  I must admit my facilities had become a bit blurred at this point and my hunger was getting the best of me.  This manifested itself in slightly undercooked but not totally unpleasant bacala.  However another twist entered the fray and I shall not take responsibility for this: despite following my already established method for soaking the cod (12 hours, minimum 5 changes of water) this batch must have been excessively salted because it was clearly salty on our plates.  Perhaps additional cooking in the heated water would have purged out the final hits of salt while finishing the meat as well? While I do enjoy the intended presentation of a large steak of the cod perched atop your beans as opposed to mashed in as in my last dish, it becomes the final issue with resolving the salt quotient.  If broken up and intermingled with the ingredients a bit the salt seems more tolerable while still present.

The chorizo has really changed character by the end, a substantial number of pieces had stayed in their casings though they had grown in size to near explosive levels.  And explode they did when they were introduced to the palate, both figuratively in flavor and physically as they nearly dissolved from the extensive cooking.  Such an excellent contrast with the white, clean cod.

In the end this dish requires a revisit at some point for a few tuneups and also just for pure enjoyment.  Simple and profound like all of Fergus' work.

Recipe #2: "Salt Cod, Potato and Tomato" (page 138)

This recipe struck me for its simplicity and its use of salt cod, an item I have never attempted to wrangle.  There is an excellent gourmet cheese store in my neighborhood that I have shopped in many times, they too carry the famous bacala, and it sits in open air unrefrigerated in a wooden box, so rigid that it cannot be constrained by that container and the ends of the long fillets reach upwards, and out.  Fearsome no doubt to the unfamiliar; quizzical to the interested and notified.

This is the kind of 'proper eating' I enjoy, and I feel its an excellent microcosm of the book, and what I enjoy about it.  Potatoes and tomatoes are quite easy to come by of course, so I set out on a Sunday afternoon to a grocery store only a few miles from my home but one I do not frequent.  They did in fact have the salt cod, though I was shocked by its $9.99/lb price tag.  They had prepackaged amounts that led to either a ~$28 or ~$14 price tag.  I opted for the smaller 1.5 lb package and made my way out.

This is another example of Fergus' wild addiction to garlic.  The recipe calls for no less then 28 cloves of garlic: I sourced an excellent head from the same store who's produce is prime.  Its large fresh cloves only reached a summation of likely 12-14 cloves.  The thought of two entire heads of garlic is a bit much by my standards, however I am used to this by now after reviewing this log of recipes time and time again.  As I mixed likely 8 large plum tomatoes with that head of garlic (the cloves lightly smashed and peeled, but not chopped) and a shower of fresh black pepper from my new grinder (another gift from the same [my only] brother) and copious amounts of salt and rosemary it dawned on me that this concoction amounted to something that Emeril (yes, I dared to speak his name in a sentimental fashion) would say would be 'just fine stuffed into a hoagie roll' or something of that nature.

The rosemary raises an important point regarding herbs.  This amounts to another improvisation upon the standards laid upon me by Mr. Henderson.  His use of herbs is quite demure, no doubt an extension of his (quite British) personality.  I am a more brash (read: American) cook and also a student of Jamie Oliver who spoiled me long ago upon gigantic bales of herbs.  This recipe calls for a simple 'handful' of curly parsley, I made the call to use rosemary in fair amounts.  I used the rewards of two long (6") stems chopped, plus two more of the same in with the boiling potatoes.

I did a 12 hour cycle on the salt cod, likely changed the water 5 times.  I started around 6pm the evening prior to this one as I rise at approximately the same hour in the AM.  I changed the water 3 times within the next couple hours, as expected the salt osmosis was great initially.  I did wake around 2:30am (as is standard) for a variety of reasons at which point I changed it once again.  Before I left for work at 6:40am sharp, I drained the cod and left it in the fridge in its container.

Already mentioned is my preparation of the tomatoes, I carefully coached them through their bid in the oven until they appeared beaten sufficiently.  Fergus is careful to mention the rendering of tomato juice into what he refers to as 'tomatoey oil' and he was not kidding.  I was a bit liberal with the olive oil but the delicious liquid produced at the bottom of my immortal Pyrex seems suitable for either refreshment on breakfast cereal or a hot toddy.  The garlic cloves easily mashed into near total disintegration with the help of a standard metal tined fork.  I was worried early on that the concentration of tomato flavor would prove too much even for a seasoned red fruit consumer as myself.  I spent many years preparing and eating home grown tomatoes from my grandmothers garden and I eat salads usually 3 days a week with raw product amongst them.  I allowed a single segment to cool and I was knocked back (I honestly mouthed the word 'wow' after the sample) by the flavors that tasted neither like garlic nor rosemary directly, but some phenomenal sum-is-better-than-its-parts fiesta rendered by the cooking process.

Cooking the spuds was simple enough, the rosemary poached nicely and a huge waft of aroma punched me as I manipulated the lid to check and control boil level. As I removed them from the water I added my salt cod to another pot of already simmering water.  I waited until the last moment to do so as Fergus recommended only 5 minutes to poach it well.  Never having tampered with this material before I followed his advice, or at least prepared to.  I was surprised earlier on at the firmness of the cod even after 12 hours drowned -- this continued as it poached.  I prodded it gently time to time and by 5 minutes I did not feel that it was about to give way.  Edible certainly but Fergus points that it should almost easily shred when drained and cooking has completed.  In the end it took closer to 10 and as directed it did begin to flake when stirred with the other components of this dish.

At the last minute I began to spoon away the 'tomatoey oil' from the large garlic chunks then began to carefully add some that did contain my fork-mashed cloves and in the end could hardly control myself, I added nearly all of it.  This is a dish that calls out to be well seasoned in all regards.  The copious use of rosemary was a home run, unfortunately I cannot agree that simple parsley would bring this together.  A heavier hand with salt/pepper on the tomatoes as well really was the chemistry experiment in my oven that made this come alive.

Total success - though in closing I must admit that I decided to forego Fergus final garnish: hardboiled eggs.  The thought does not disgust me per se but seems wildly unnecessary and too far astray from the more sturdy, rustic flavors the dish delivers.