Seared Salted Cod

While my mother was vis­it­ing we spent some time cook­ing, I love Por­tuguese food and don’t get to eat it very often because the ingre­di­ents are hard to come by. One of my favourite Por­tuguese dishes is caldo de fun­cho, or fen­nel soup. You might be say­ing fen­nel isn’t hard to come by but you’d be wrong. I need fen­nel tops and you just can’t find fen­nel with the tops still on here!!

Another dish I love is salted cod. When I went to the Azores last sum­mer I brought home some salted cod so had some in the freezer. My mom had come to the UK with a friend (Angie-Honey) of hers whose son also lives here. Because they live in Sus­sex and the return flight was at 6am Angie-Honey spent the night. We cooked a big Por­tuguese meal for her, her son and daugh­ter in-law. None of these dishes were weight Watcher’s friendly but hey ho!

BACALHAU ALOURADO
Serves 4
Pre­heat oven 200C
2 bay leaves
3 pieces of salted cod ( soaked for 12 hours, chang­ing the water often)
1 onion, finely chopped
4 gar­lic cloves, minced
100 ml olive oil
2 car­rots, grated
1 kilo pota­toes
200 mls sin­gle cream
Pars­ley, finely chopped
Salt
Pep­per
Nut­meg
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup freshly grated Parme­san cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil with 2 bay leaves, add the cod and cook for 5 min­utes. After 5 min­utes turn off burner and let cod cool in pot with the water.

In another pot bring water to boil and cook pota­toes. Once the pota­toes are cooked mash them and put aside until needed.

While the cod is cool­ing grate the car­rots, mince the gar­lic and finely chop the onion. Sautée the gar­lic and onions in the olive oil. add the grated car­rots and sautée well.

Take the cod out of the water (sav­ing water for later) and break it into bits, remov­ing the skin and all bones, add 2.5 mls of the cod water to the cod and let it soak. Mix the pars­ley, cream, salt, pep­per and nutmeg.

Take all the ingre­di­ents and mix well and put in a bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle the bread­crumbs over the salted cod mix­ture. Grate fresh Parme­san over the dish and place in a pre­heated oven for 20 minutes.

A few things I would do dif­fer­ently:
I would roughly chop the car­rots. I would also roughly chop the pota­toes. I think the dish was a lit­tle too homoge­nous. I pre­fer the ingre­di­ents to be more whole. Does tht make sense? I would also use low fat creme fraiche and I’d use an oil sub­sti­tute in an effort to make it a bit more Weight Watcher’s friendly.

If you want to try this recipe you can buy some salted cod from The Fish Society