Salt Cod Fish Cakes

Ever since I made salt cod this past September I’ve been meaning to make something with it.

The problem has been that you have to soak the salt cod in fresh water for 24 hours (or even more!!) before using it, so you have to be together enough to plan 24+ hours in advance and then deliver on the other end.

This week the perfect storm.  Debbie is out of town, so when I got home Thursday night from NYC I had no distractions and was able to see clearly forward to the Friday night as an oppty.  I jumped on it.

Salt Cod Fish Cakes, from Gourmet, via Epicurious, are what you might call, if you were Jewish, latkes with scales and fins.  Basically a potato pancake (with an inexplicable bit of parsnip thrown in) with salt cod as about half the throw weight.

Here’s the finished fish cakes.  I thought they were great, but I love salt (I thought the unwashed bacalao was pretty tasty, before the 24 hours fresh water treatment).

Anyhow, as Marshall would say, good chomp.

One Hit, One Miss

Made two dishes last night: "New Coq au Vin" and "Crispy Cauliflower with Olives, Capers, and Parsley".  One hit, one miss.

The hit was the cauliflower.  The long cooking with oil in the pot – maybe you’d call it “non-stir-frying” or “pas de saute”-ing – made the cauliflower tender and crispy.  And the dressing was peppy enough to please Debbie and me.  Doesn’t look fantastic in this picture, but it was pleasant enough to the eye and tasty.

The dud was the chicken.  I don’t know – I’ve got a thing about braised chicken, and I had an unstoppable yen to do some kind of chicken braised in wine.

The recipe looked bland, but I kept hoping that the infallible Epicurious would prove itself again.  Guess what, it didn’t.  Maybe I’m getting better at translating in my mind from the (web) page to the table.  In any case, it was not obviously flawed in any way, but didn’t taste very… pronounced.