On April 16th my father will have his 99th birthday. He loves food and so for his birthday he wanted to eat Baccalà, not only eat it, but also cook it. He made a precise plan to cook it in his room at the nursing home, but after a serious discussion we decided it would be best if we were to cook it together at our house.
So here is my report:
Baccalà is dried codfish from Norway and a specialty in Italy in the Venice region. It means saltfish, but its not salted but air dried http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StockfishI got a nice piece of Baccalà from our local Italian store.
On Wednesday I did the first step. The fish is as long as a baseball bat and about that stiff, so my dad told me to beat it with a wooden stick until soft and remove the bones. Did you ever hit a bicycle tire with a stick? Well, that is what it felt like. I gave up after 15 minutes and did my own research on the internet. Some recipes suggest to soak it first in water. So the fish went into the laundry tub for 8 hours, soaking in cold water in the bathroom, door closed to protect it from the cat.
The next morning something smelled very very fishy!
After changing the water and more soaking, I was ready to cut the fish. Now the fish was twice its initial weight, but not any softer. After sharpening my best knife I cut the beast open. April the cat was around, but she did not like the skin. It has the consistency of shoe soles. The meat came off nicely, and I ended up with 1,3 kg of chewy meat out of a 0,75kg of dried fish.
Today I picked Omi and Opi up and Opi directed the cooking.
In a glass casserole he placed butter, 3mm sliced potatoes with salt, pepper, garlic and chopped parsley. Then a layer of cooked saltfish and he repeated it for 5 layers. The last layer were potatoes with lots of parmesan over it. Opi also poured some fish stock over it. We baked the casserole at 180C for just over 1hour with a lid and then 30 more minutes without the lid. Opi tasted it in between. The smell in the house was really delicious, and we enjoyed it with fresh baguette and a "Vogerlsalat". We all enjoyed it very much, even though Opi felt that something might be missing.
Happy 99th birthday Opi!
