Bacalao a la Llauna: easy and delicious salt cod

I love this dish at restaurants and assumed it would be difficult to make at home -- wrong! It's quick and easy, and doesn't require exotic ingredients. Except, that is, for the bacalao (salt cod), more below. You only need a few pantry staples, and it comes together in under 30 minutes. The paprika-infused oil on the top of the slightly crusty fish provides an intriguing,, almost smoky complement.

125 g each Bacalao, white beans, seared leeks

I didn't realize until I started looking for recipes that this dish is a Catalan speciality -- I assumed it was available all over Spain. "La Llauna" is the flat metal tray used for baking, here for bacalao, but we've also had snails cooked and served in them: they're cheap and versatile.

In Barcelona, the markets have specialists like Perelló who sell this dehydrated or already soaked and hydrated for you, and I now get their hydrated version to save time; I would not use frozen cod because the amount of water loss during thawing results in a tough piece of fish . Get a boneless cut. It's worth paying more for the thick cuts like loin, rather than thinner filets: it provides better texture and cooks more evenly. As I've written elsewhere, if you get the dehydrated version, rinse it well to remove excess salt, then hydrate over about 3 days, changing the water a couple times a day -- don't go too far or it will be a bit dull, you want a bit of salt, texture, and funk that you won't find in fresh cod.

Basically, you sauté the Bacalao and finish in the oven, topped with a simple sauce of oil, garlic, pimenton, and wine. You can skip my recipe and head straight to Spain On A Fork: he does a great job combining it with traditional white beans in the final baking; he even has a video. Spain in a Pan is very similar, and suggests you can use fresh cod. Cod vendor Bacalao.com mentions that traditionally the flour isn't used but is optional; I think it improves the surface texture. Spanish blog El Forner de Alella is similar to the others (with a helpful video), if you don't trust the English ones. I like the White Beans with this, but you can omit them if you don't like or don't have them. 

This serves 2. Measurements don't need to be exact.

 10 ml    1 Tbs   Extra Virgin Olive Oil (for filming the tray)

300 g    10 oz    Bacalao loins 3-4cm thick, hydrated

 40 ml    2 Tbs   Extra Virgin Olive Oil (for sautéing the Bacalao)

200 g     7 oz    White Beans (in a jar; drained and rinsed)

  4 cloves        Garlic, sliced thinly

  1 g     1 tsp   Pimenton Dulce ("sweet" paprika, not picante)

 10 g     2 Tbs   Flour, for dusting

                  Black Pepper

                  Salt, if the Bacalao is a bit mild

 60 ml  1/4 C     White Wine

                  Parsley, chopped fine (for garnish)

All the ingredients except the Pimenton

Spread the 10 ml Olive Oil in a heat proof tray or casserole (llauna).

If using, drain the White Beans, rinse, and shake off the water, and add to the tray in a single layer.

Cut the Bacalao into two pieces for serving; pat them dry with paper towels.

Mix the Pepper (and Salt if needed) with the Flour.

Lightly dredge the Bacalao in the Flour, coat thoroughly, shake off extra.

Preheat the oven to 200c / 400f with heat from top and bottom if you can.

Heat a large skillet over medium with the 40 ml Olive Oil.

Add the Bacalao to the skillet with the Oil, skin side up.

Sauté 3-4 minutes per side, depending on thickness: you want to develop a light golden crust but you'll finish cooking it through in the oven.

Remove the Bacalao to the tray on top of the optional Beans, skin side down.

There should be a thin film of Oil left in the skillet, remove some if it's too much.

Lower the heat of the skillet and sauté the garlic, stirring often, until fragrant.

Remove from heat and add the Pimenton Dulce and stir quickly -- it becomes acrid if it burns so don't expose it to too much heat.

Add the White Wine and return to the heat for a few minutes to drive off the alcohol and concentrate, then drizzle over the Bacalao in the tray.

Bake the Bacalao in the tray 5 minutes or until barely cooked through; don't overcook it or it will dry out; it should flake into large moist chunks.

Plate each cut of Bacalao with the optional Beans.

Garnish with Parsley.

I cooked the Parsley with the sauce but it muddies the appearance; garnish next time

Squid Ink Pasta with Huevo de Bacalao and Saffron Cream Sauce

I frequently make pasta with squid ink. This time I combined it with a cream sauce containing "huevo de bacalao" -- firm cured cod egg sacks, botarga. It was easy to make, rich and intense, and worth doing again. The Bacalao retains some of its texture which makes it more appealing than a smooth sauce. Adding Garlic and Saffron seemed compatible flavors, but you can omit if you like.

The first time I made this with 160 g (?) Huevo de Bacalao, the second with a 125 g Mullet. Both seemed a bit dense, thickening the sauce. I'd suggest dropping this to 100 g, with half in the sauce and half as a garnish. I first used 36% fat cream, but dropped to 18% fat cream the next time but it was still quite dense.

Dramatic squid ink pasta and intense cream sauce

pinch    Saffron
         Bourbon or other alcohol
         Oil
1 clove  Garlic, minced
100 ml   Cream, 18% fat
100 g    Botarga: Huevo de Bacalao, Mullet, etc, coarsely grated
180 g    Squid Ink Pasta, fresh, cut into spaghetti

Pulverize the Saffron in a folded sheet of paper rubbed with the back of a spoon and add to a little Bourbon or other alcohol to extract the flavor.

In a pot, heat a little Oil and add minced Garlic; cook until softened and the raw smell is gone.

Grate the Botarga on a coarse box grater.

Add the Cream and half the Botarga to the pot and heat; it may seem too thin for a sauce at first but will thicken as the Bacalao dissolves into the Cream. Add the Saffron in alcohol. Stir occasionally.

Boil the Pasta in salted water; the fresh pasta  will only take a few minutes. Drain, but save some of the water to thin the sauce if needed.

Plate the pasta and top with the sauce, garnish with remaining Botarga; serve.

Bacalhau com Natas: Portuguese salt cod with cream sauce

Friends of ours mentioned enjoying this while traveling in Portugal and it sounded like fun since I enjoy Bacalao. It turned out well: very rich, creamy, with soft potatoes -- a fine dish for cooler weather. 

Crusty gratin with creamy bacalao and potatoes

This recipe is based on several I found: Crumb-Snatched, We Travel Portugal, Authentic Food Quest, and Portuguese Soul Kitchen. Most boil the fish in water but AFQ's cooks it in milk which makes more sense: it flavors the milk rather than diluting the fish. All the recipes call for Mozzarella for the gratin, but that seems too pizza-like so I used Parmesan and another cheese which I had on hand; you could use only Parmesan.

I'm using frozen Bacalao/Bacallà al punt de sal for convenience, and because it's less expensive than the dry salt cod I reserve for dishes like Pil Pil. If you use dry Bacalao, you'll need to hydrate for 2-3 days in several changes of water. Some recipes suggest using store bought shoestring fries instead of frying potatoes yourself, which I think is clever, but I'm not stooping to that yet. The recipe below had Cream and more Cheese, but this seemed a bit excessive, overpowering the fish, so I've tweaked it.

This serves 2 generously.

300 g      Bacalao al punt de sal, thawed

300 g      Milk

  1        Bay Leaf

 45 ml     Olive Oil

  1 large  Onion, yellow or white, peeled, sliced

  2 clove  Garlic, sliced

300 g      Potato, peeled, cut into 1 cm cubes

 20 g      Butter

 20 g      Flour

           Nutmeg, grated

           Salt

           Pepper

 25 g      Cheese, Pecorino Romano and/or Parmesan, grated

  5 sprigs Parsley, chopped 

If using dried Bacalao, hydrate it 2-3 days in multiple changes of water.

To save time, cook the Bacalao at the same time as you sauté the Onions, then make the bechamel while frying the Potatoes.

In a pot, gently simmer the Bacalao in the Milk with the Bay, covered on low for 5 minutes until barely cooked and starting to flake.

Drain, reserving the Milk.

Discard any skin, bones, and the Bay.

Flake the fish with fork or fingers.

Onions and garlic on left, bacalao and milk on right

In a skillet, sauté Onion and Garlic in 15 ml Oil until tender, reserve to a cazuela or baking dish.

Coat the bottom of the same skillet with 30 ml Oil and fry the Potatoes until golden and barely cooked through; cover the skillet after developing the crust to speed the cooking.

In the same pot as you simmered the Bacalao, melt Butter and add Flour, whisk to create a paste and cook the Flour for a few minutes.

Slowly add the fishy Milk and cook, whisking continuously until you get a sauce a little thicker than heavy cream. 

Add the Nutmeg, then adjust with Salt and Pepper. 

Remove from heat.

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Layer the Potatoes on the Onions/Bacalao in the cazuela and shake to distribute evenly.

Top with the bechamel, and even out again.

Top with grated Cheese.

Bake at 200C for 20 minutes until cheese is melted and browned.

Garnish with Parsley.

Serve with a dry white wine.

Bacalao Stuffed Piquillos in Basque Sauce: richer, for two

We've been making this for years based on the book by Teresa Barrenechea: The Basque Table. Irene said the sauce overwhelmed the dish and that she wanted more fish with larger chunks in the peppers. This revised recipe addresses those desires, and scales it for a dinner for two. 

We're scaling some of the proportions based on ingredients we can find here. For example, instead of the dried salt cod at 24€/Kg, we can use half a bag of frozen Bacalao de Punto de Sal which is just 6€/Kg and doesn't require hydration to de-salt. The Pequillos come in 220 mg jar and ours contained 11 peppers. I had one Choricero pepper, not enough, so I added a Ñora. A pastry bag really simplifies stuffing the peppers, but a zip-top bag with corner cut off should work, or you can use a spoon if you're a masochist.

Stuffed and sauced, before baking

Bacalao Béchamel

250 g      Bacalao del Punto de Sal, frozen

 40 ml     Olive Oil

 20 g      Flour

175 g      Milk

Chop the Bacalao into pea-sized chunks, this is easier while it's still partially frozen.

Sauté on high heat in 40 ml Olive Oil to drive off water, about 5 minutes.

Add Flour and cook off the raw edge on medium, about 5 minutes.

Add Milk and continue cooking until it's noticeably thicker; you don't want it pour-able when hot.

Load a pastry bag with the filling, making sure its snout is big enough to accommodate the Bacalao chunks; let cool while you make the Sauce in the same skillet.

Basque Sauce

The original recipe hydrates dried Spanish chilis, but here we can find jars of Choricero and Ñora flesh ("carne") which is convenient if you haven't planned ahead.

 14 g      Choricero or Ñora Peppers, dried, or 150 g jar "carne"

165 g      Onion, 1 small to medium, diced

 30 ml     Olive Oil

  2 cloves Garlic

 15 g      Tomato (1/4 small)

           Salt

Seed the Chili Peppers and hydrate 8 hours; you can also simmer in hot water for about 30-60 minutes if needed. Keep the hydrating water. Roughly chop the Chilis.

Sauté the Onion in the 30 ml Olive Oil until soft.

Add the Garlic, Chilis, and Tomato, and continue to cook until the Garlic is soft; it's fine if the Onions take on a bit of color.

Transfer to the jar of a stick blender and whiz to make a sauce. You may need to add some of the reserved Chili hydration water to thin it enough -- that's fine, it has flavor. 

Taste and adjust Salt. 

If the Sauce is too thin, return it to the skillet and cook down to thicken.

Assembly

10-12  Pequillo Peppers, whole, from 290 g gross / 220 g net jar

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Drain the Pequillos and arrange on a plate; I find it handy to put a shot glass in the center to hold the Pequillos as I'm stuffing them.

Fill the Pequillos with the Bacalao Béchamel using the pastry bag.

Spoon about a third of the Sauce into an oven proof baking dish.

Arrange the stuffed Pequillos around the dish and top with the remaining Sauce.

Bake for 15-30 minutes so everything's hot.

Serve.

Bacalao Pil Pil sous vide: streamlined without oil in the bag

We've been making Bacalao Pil Pil in the US for years, and now that we're living in Barcelona, we have easy access to quality Bacalao. We hit upon a couple YouTube videos that streamline our sous vide technique by eliminating the oil from the sous vide bag when cooking the fish so we don't need to separate it from the fish liquid. We've made two variations that are very promising; we're zeroing in on a streamlined technique with terrific results.

There are multiple attempts in this post, scan down to find the latest findings and techniques. Sadly, I didn't take photos for most of these.

Streamlining: no oil in the sous vide bag

This first video (predating my sous vide technique) was done in 2015 and is cooked at 65C for 30 minutes, using the same strainer-in-skillet technique I used to create an emulsion from the exuded fish liquid. In the next, from 2020, the chef cooks at 48C for 20-30 minutes without oil, then drains off the fish elixir and emulsifies it quickly with a stick blender, then adds the oil. He cooks the garlic in oil in a jar in the same bath as the fish, so he doesn't even need a sauté pan. The last, from 2021, cooks at 60C for 20 minutes, again without oil. She too drains off the elixir into a cup and creates the emulsion with a stick blender, adding in the garlic-oil to build the sauce.

The temperatures above are 48C, 60C, and 65C; I think 48C (118F) is too low for "cooked" fish, but want to avoid overcooking it, so we'll pick a middling 55C (131F). Times ranged from 20 to 30 minutes, and we'll go with the higher end to make sure our relatively thick loin cuts are cooked through.

Both are portions for two, but the first is a bit meager since you lose some weight to the fish liquid.

First Try: too garlicky

250 g      Bacalao lomo, cut into 2 pieces for serving
  2 clove  Garlic, sliced thin
 80 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil

De-salt the Bacalao by washing the salt off, and putting in a bowl of water. Change it twice a day for two days, then once again the morning you're going to cook.

I bagged the Bacalao (without the frozen olive oil I used to use) and cooked sous vide 30 minutes at 55C / 131F. I put the Garlic and Oil in a ziptop bag and put it in the bath as well to infuse the oil and cook the garlic (or not!).

As expected, the fish liquid was easy to pour into the cup of a stick blender; I kept the fish warm in its bag in the bath.

I added the Garlic from the Oil bag and blitzed with with a stick blender. After it turned creamy white, I drizzled in the Oil. I think I added some Salt and that was too much. It didn't thicken as much as I'd like but had a light cream texture like I'd seen in the videos.

Plate the fish, top with the sauce.

Oh, my! That garlic was pretty raw, way too hot and unpleasant even for me; it was also too salty. Clearly, the garlic cannot cook enough in a 55C bag in 30 minutes, let alone the 48C bath the chef used. I would have preferred the sauce a bit thicker, but not as thick as the mayonnaise consistency I'd been making in the US. 

I kept the excess sauce in a baggie in the fridge for a few days for another attempt.

Second Try: tamed garlic, bacalao al punto de sal

I used some frozen Bacalao al Punto de Sal; this is fresh cod that's been brined with "just enough salt", then frozen. It's handy if you haven't planned ahead for the real thing.

360 g  Bacalao al punto de sal, frozen
       Leftover sauce from previous batch with too much garlic and salt

I divided the Bacalao between two bags, sealed, and cooked them sous vide -- again at 55C for 30 minutes. 

The pil pil sauce from the previous batch had gelled in the fridge, probably from the protein or collagen in the fish elixir. To tame the garlic, I cooked it in a small sauce pan on low, whisking occasionally; the texture seemed to stay the same. After a while, I turned up the heat to medium and let it bubble just a bit, and whisked again -- wow, it quickly developed a delightful light mousse-y texture.

I plated and sauced. As expected, this fresh-frozen cod did not have the intriguing funk of salt-cured Bacalao, and the texture seemed a little mushy compared to the real thing.

The sauce was a terrific texture, light and fluffy, not like thin cream nor thick mayonnaise: really great. The garlic had been tamed as desired: still assertive but very edible. It was still too salty but we can fix that next time.

We didn't use the liquid that was exuded from this fish because we didn't need it. I noticed it didn't seem to be a cloudy suspension like salt-cured bacalao provides, but more a separate clear liquid with flecks of white protein mixed through. It also did not turn to gel in the fridge like the salt-cured elixir. I suspect it will not make a creamy emulsion when blended, but it's worth a try.

What we learned, improvements for next time

Garlic cannot be cooked sufficiently in our sous vide temperatures and times. Next time, cook the garlic in oil in a sauce pan on low while the bacalao is in the bath; when cooked (but not browned), remove the garlic and save it to build the emulsion with the fish liquid. Keep the oil warm for the pil pil sauce.

If blitzing the elixir with garlic and drizzling in the oil doesn't make as thick a pil pil sauce as you'd like, heat it in a pan on medium and fluff with a manual whisk. Hold the fish in the bath its bag so it stays warm for service.  Don't add salt to the pil pil sauce, it'll have plenty from the fish.

2024-01-23 Pil Pil Espuma

This version learns from the above and is the simplest yet. However, I used an electric whisk to create the Pil Pil and it fluffed up into an espuma (foam) that was almost identical to whipped egg whites in texture; it was fun and unusual, but too fluffy to be a proper sauce. I think there may other interesting applications, but this veers too far from tradition -- Basque grandmothers would be spinning in their graves if they saw it.  

Pil Pil was an espuma rather than a sauce; served with fried polenta

300 g      Bacalao loin, cut in two pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, lightly smashed, peeled

Hydrate the Bacalao and desalt over 2-3 days in water, changed daily.

Put the fish in a sous vide bag and seal on "wet" setting so it doesn't squeeze the fish.

Cook sous vide 30 minutes at 55C.

Meanwhile, heat the Garlic in the Oil on very low to extract flavor without browning garlic much.

When the time is up, drain the fish liquid into a stick blender jar; hold the fish in the bag in the hot sous vide bath for service.

Add the Garlic to the blender jar and whip with an electric whisk: it will froth up like a meringue; while whipping, drizzle in the infused Oil -- ours turned became a fluffy espuma rather than a sauce.

Plate the fish and top with the espuma sauce.

Next time, try using the regular stick blender blade rather than the whisk to discourage rabid foaming.

Use a larger weight of fish, this was a bit meager. 

2024-03-25 Blend instead of whisk

I buy a large high-quality Bacalao loin when they're on sale: they keep a long time in the fridge. I cut a 640 g piece in half for this, and the resulting 325 g piece was enough for two people with a large side dish. The pil pil was not an espuma this time, it was creamy after I thickened it a bit over heat.

Bacalao Pil Pil and Black Garlic, with sautéed Artichokes

325 g      Bacalao loin, cut into two serving pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, peeled, sliced

  2 clove  Black Garlic, sliced, for garnish (optional)

Rehydrate the bacalao, bag and seal it, and cook 30 minutes at 55C.

Meanwhile, heat the Garlic in Oil on very low.

Pour the liquid from the sous vide bag into a stick blender jar with the Garlic and blend.

Drizzle in the Oil while stick blending.

If it's too thin, add it to the pot used for the Oil and whip with a hand whisk until it thicken.

Plate the Bacalao, top with the Pil Pil, garnish with Black Garlic.

I had extra Pil Pil which I put in the fridge. The next day, it firmed up like a mousse and was quite tasty. It made for a fine topping on earthy bread topped with smoked salmon, and I'll use it on Arroz Negro tonight.

Bacallà a 65 amb crema de pequillos (Perelló)

We had this for lunch  at Perelló, a bacalao vendor and excellent cafe in Mercat Ninot. I assumed the bacalao was cooked sous vide at 65C, and then served on a smooth puree of pequillo peppers. My attempt to recreate it at home was disappointing: the pequillo sauce was fine but the fish was too salty, and not at all tender and flaking. I may have under-desalted it (causing the centers to stay stiff), or I may have overcooked it (the fish exuded a lot more white liquid than I expected).  I need to try it again and adjust my technique, because I've done similar sous vide preps for Bacalao Pil Pil and they've come out very well.

For the sauce, I would normally use garlic and oil, but I had left over oil from my super garlicky Toum sauce that I wanted to use up.

A light serving for 2.

250 g Bacalao loin, skin on

225 g drained Pequillo Peppers from a jar

 10 g Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 25 g Toum Oil

  5 g Salt

Cut the Bacalao loin into 2 pieces for serving and de-salt it in a bowl of water for two nights, changing every day.

Dry and put in a sous vide bag and seal.

Cook sous vide for 45 minutes at 65C.

While that's cooking, combine Pequillo Peppers, Oils, and Salt in a vessel and blitz with a stick blender until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Drain and reserve the white liquid from the Bacalao bag; this should contain protein sufficient to make a Pil Pil sauce when blended with oil.

I seared the skin of the Bacalao portions with a Searzall torch, but don't think this added much; it's not something Perelló did.

Spread some Pequillo sauce on a plate, top with Bacalao.

We served with pan fried potatoes.

Garnish with parsley.

Samfaina amb Bacalao: Easter dish of salt cod with stewed vegetable sauce

Samfaina is a classic Catalan dish of stewed eggplant with a sofrito of onion, garlic, and grated tomato; it's frequently a side dish to meats, or used as a sauce, as we do here. Ratatouille is a more famous French version, but Claudia Roden and makes the case that this preparation of vegetables originated in Spain, since the Arabs introduced the eggplant to the Iberian peninsula long ago; both she and Coleman Andrews point out that peppers and tomatoes came from Spain's conquest of the "new world" and were widely used here before they appeared in French cooking. 

I'm drawing from Coleman Andrews book "Catalan Cuisine" for both Samfaina and a chef's take on Bacalao amb Samfaina. Claudia Roden's recipe in "The Food of Spain" is similar, but she adds the vegetables in stages. Directo al Paladar has a recipe including bacalao that is detailed with pictures. Many recipes include zucchini, but Roden doesn't like that version, and I don't think it adds much.

The red bell peppers we get in Barcelona are huge, compared to the green/red bells we got in the US. The eggplant I got here looks like a smaller version of the "globe" version in the US, but I think any variety (including slender Japanese) would work fine. Proportions are approximate, below is the weight of the veggies I had on hand. 

Bacalao on Samfaina, with white beans and crunchy breadcrumbs

This serves 2 but you'll probably have extra samfaina; keep it to serve with other dishes.

 50 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as needed

150 g      Onion (1 medium), chopped

  4 cloves Garlic, minced

330 g      Eggplant (1 medium), skin on, 1-2 cm dice

240 g      Tomatoes (4 medium), grated or chopped

300 g      Red Bell Pepper (1 large), skin on, seeded, 1-22 cm dice

250 g      Bacalao, hydrated 2 days to desalinate, skinned

           Flour

           Olive Oil

Heat the Oil on medium with some Salt, add Onions, cook covered for a few minutes.

Add Garlic.

When onions are soft, add Peppers and Eggplant; add Oil if needed.

Cook covered on medium for 30-40 minutes.

Uncover, increase heat a bit, cook until liquid has evaporated, stirring occasionally.

Add Tomatoes, continue cooking uncovered, until liquid evaporates again and vegetables are very soft, probably another 20 minutes. 

Season with Salt and Pepper.

Dry Bacalao thoroughly, cut into 2 serving size pieces; dust each with flour then sauté in a small amount of Oil on all sides until golden-brown. 

Add on top of the Samfaina, cover, cook on low until fish is cooked through.

Serve by spooning out some Samfaina onto plates and top with Bacalao.

Potaje de Vigilia: Easter stew of chickpeas, spinach, bacalao

We've been immersing ourselves in the seasonal foods in Barcelona, and Easter Week (semana santa) is a big deal here with its own foods.  Despite being a food of abstinence (vigilia), this is rich and the flavor is well more than the sum of ingredients. It's not hard to make, and you could substitute ham for the bacalao to provide the salty umami, or omit the egg and bacalao if you wanted a vegan version.  Claudia Rodan's recipe doesn't use the bacalao in her recipe; I'm basing mine on Emma Garcia's which uses a "majado" of breadcrumbs, egg, and oil to provide body and flavor.

Garbanzos, Spinach, Bacalao, garnished with chopped Egg Whites

Measurements are approximate, I'm aiming for a something thicker than a soup, almost a stew. 

This makes 4 dinner portions.

240 g      Bacalao, hydrated over two nights, changing water

240 g      Garbanzo beans, dried; rehydrate overnight

  2 whole  Cloves

  2        Bay Leaves

           Olive Oil, for frying

  2 clove  Garlic, sliced

  2 slices Bread

  2        Eggs

           Extra Virgin Olive Oil, for majado

200 g      Onion (or Leek), chopped

130 g      Tomato, chopped

300 ml     Fish Stock

big pinch  Pimentón Dulce

300 g      Spinach, fresh

Soak the salted, dried Bacalao in water overnight; change the water, soak again overnight, drain. If it's still stiff and too salty, soak bit more, but you'll be cooking it and don't want to leach all the salt funk from the fish.

Soak the dried Garbanzo beans overnight in plenty of water. Drain and leave in the fridge until you're ready. You could use cooked canned or jarred garbanzos too: use about 450 g pre-cooked garbanzos.

Cook the Garbanzos covered in water with the Cloves and Bay Leaf, some Salt and Pepper, and with any aromatics you have around -- a carrot, celery stalk, onion, etc. This should take about 90-120 minutes, covered, on a lazy simmer.

Add some Olive Oil to a skillet and sauté the Garlic; reserve.
Add the bread and toast in the Olive Oil on both sides until a bit crunchy and toasted; you might want to weight it down to make good contact; reserve. Don't clean the skillet, you'll use it again in a minute.

Boil the eggs: add to cold water, bring to boil, turn off, cover, and let sit 10 minutes. Peel and separate yolks from whites, keep both. 

In a blender or food processor, blitz the toasted bread with two egg yolks and some nice Extra Virgin Olive Oil. This makes a "majado" -- kinda like a panade -- which will thicken the sauce and add depth of flavor. Reserve.

The blitzed majado

Add some more Olive Oil to the skillet and sauté the Onions until soft and a bit golden, add then the Tomato, and cook until soft. Blitz in blender or food processor with the Fish Stock and Pimentón to get a smooth texture. 

When cooked, drain the Garbanzos and collect the cooking liquid; toss the aromatics.

Add the Garbanzos and Garlic back to the pot with the smooth Onion Tomato Stock. 

Add the Majado for body and flavor.

Add the Spinach and stir to cook, and let it reduce down.

If it's too thick for your liking, add the bean cooking liquid until you get the texture you prefer; you could thin it with more Fish Stock too, if needed.

Cut up the rehydrated Bacalao and add to the potage, and let it cook through a few minutes.

Check seasoning for Salt and Pepper.

Serve in bowls, garnished with chopped Egg Whites.

Bacalao Pil Pil Sous Vide -- in our Barcelona apartment

In our last episode with Bacalao, we found that we could get the "elixir" -- the emulsifier for the pil pil sauce -- efficiently using minimal oil using a sous vide technique, and subsequent experiments showed we could even do this with Mahi Mahi, at lower temperature.

We recently moved to Barcelona, where Bacalao is everywhere, and  restaurants have special machines to agitate the fish in oil to create the emulsion. We brought our first-generation sous vide machine by Sansaire -- even though it only ran on US-style 115VAC 60Hz: we got a step-down transformer to convert Spain's 230VAC to 115VAC, and hoped the 50Hz frequency wouldn't bother the motor too much. 

Tonight's dinner proved a success, using local bacalao and the hacked sous vide setup. We also discovered that using a even lower temperature works, and have suggestions for improvement.

Bacalao with emulsived sauce, served with potatoes and bulbing onions from the plancha

For a previous dinner here, we got some salted, dried bacalao from our local supermarket. The person in front of us got all coveted loins ("Estalvi!",  "saving!"), so we picked up a couple filets. We rehydrated them over a couple nights in the fridge and used half of it for one dinner, and froze the rest which we used tonight. The proportions below are what we had, and what we did; in the epilog, we suggest adjustments.

280 g      Bacalao filets, skin on, hydrated
pinch      Cayenne pepper flakes
2 cloves Garlic, sliced
120 ml    Olive Oil and Corn Oil mix (we ran out of Olive Oil)

Bag everything in a zip-top and place in a sous vide bath at 55C/130F for 30 minutes. I turned and agitated the bag every 5 minutes or so to make sure everything was distributed well.

How embarrassing: 135F, not 55C

Pour the oil and the critical milky white liquid that collected in the bag, the "elixir" (which I believe is a weak gelatin from under the skin of the fish, or at least in its flesh) into a tall glass and let it settle out. Use a turkey baster to pull the milky liquid from under the oil and put in a pan on medium heat.

Keep the bacalao in its bag in the still-hot water bath, with the power turned off, so it stays warm for service.

Use a stock skimmer or similar to whip air into the elixer. This time, mine was quite thin, so I had the heat on our induction cooker high enough to barely simmer the liquid to reduce it a bit. Bubbles begin to form as I whisked air into it, and after a while, I bravely added some of the reserved oil: it started to combine into an emulsion -- success! I continued whisking and adding oil to build the emulsion and developed one as thick as mayonnaise, so I added a bit of lemon juice and wine, and a dash of salt, and finished when I'd used all the oil. 

Thickened emulstion 

Plate the fish, top with emulsified sauce and sliced garlic from the bag, and serve. Some parsley would have helped here.

Results

I was happy to see the milky white "elixir" in the bag after about 15 minutes, but when I poured it into the pan, it seemed really thin. It appeared to be the hydrating water from the bacalao, and I was worried it wouldn't turn into an emulsion. But after bumping up the heat to a bare simmer and continuing to whisk, it did thicken a bit and bound the oil just fine.

The fish was a bit salty, which was a result of under-hydrating the dried bacalao, not this process.

The flesh of the fish flaked, like you'd expect cod to do, but required just a bit more force than I'd like. It was still moist, so reducing the temperature from 60C/140F to 55C/135F was a good move -- and we still got the elixir. 

There was more emulsified sauce than we needed for the fish, and it was quite thick despite thinning with wine and lemon juice. It complemented the potatoes Irene cooked on the plancha quite well, so nothing was wasted.

Next Time

When hydrating dried bacalao, take a sample, cook it, check the saltiness, and hydrate longer if needed; don't over hydrate or it will become bland. Ours was too salty but by this point it was too late to adjust. Our fish mongers will helpfully hector us about the right duration to hydrate and the number of changes of water we need: listen to them, and test for taste!

Keep the cooking temperature at 55C to preserve the moistness, but increase the time from 30 to 45 or maybe 60 minutes to allow it to flake more easily.

Cut the oil for the emulsion in half, 50-60ml should do. The wine, lemon, and salt were fine additions, so keep them, but taste, taste, taste for balance.

Canelones de Bacalao y Samfaina

Canelones are a traditional dish in Catalunya, imported from Italian canoli. They have myriad different fillings;  a combination of meats seems most common, but I wanted one with bacalao -- the dried salt cod that has an appealing texture and funky aroma when rehydrated.  Many recipes I found had a loose chunky filling that looked floppy and unappealing, others ground the fish into a paste resembling cat food: I wanted texture and structure so the rolls were firm and well-defined. I found this recipe which used a traditional Catalan sauce "Samfaina" that's somewhat like French ratatouille, but more cooked down. It proved to be an excellent vehicle to hold the fish, and provided an attractive bright contrast to the Béchamel sauce and gratin of Manchego cheese.

Three pieces per person is a bit much, it's rich

We used what we had on hand, with hydrated bacalao and dried scallops for the fish, and made some substitutions for a couple of the ingredients in the samfaina, but it shows we don't need to be pedantic to make a great dish.  We also made our own pasta instead of using the pre-made dry pasta sheets they have in Catalunya. This was too much food for the two of us, and could have fed three as it was quite rich.  

Pasta:

  1       Egg

100 g     All Purpose Flour

Fish:

135 g     Rehydrated Bacalao

 25 g     Rehydrated dried Scallops (save the hydration water)

          Olive Oil

          Flour

Samfaina:

          Olive Oil

1 medium  Onion, chopped fine

3 cloves  Garlic, sliced thin

1 C       Tomato, chopped coarse

1 C       Green Pepper, chopped

2 large   Roasted Red Pepper (from a jar)

1 C       Squash flesh

Béchamel:

1 Tbs     Butter

1 1/2 Tbs Flour

1 C       Fish stock and/or fish rehydrating water

1 C       Milk

          Nutmeg

          Manchego Cheese, grated

Whiz the egg in a food processor, add flour and pulse until it combines, first into a coarse sandy texture then into a ball; form by hand if it doesn't come together. Wrap in plastic and let hydrate overnight in the fridge.

Rehydrate the Bacalao, changing the water a couple times to reduce salt; also rehydrate the dried Scallops overnight. The water from the dried Scallops is quite flavorful, and you can save if for the sauce.

Heat the Oil and cook the Onions about 10 minutes until softened; add the Garlic, cook a bit more. Add the other Samfaina ingredients and cook low for at least an hour, but two is better. If it's getting too dry, cover the pot. We want a thick-ish consistency that will bind our fish.

Cut the Pasta dough into two pieces, and roll out each with a pasta maker, reducing down to its finest setting -- #9 on our Marcato Atlas model. Lay it on a dish towel and roll out the other one. You should end up with each sheet being about 20 inches long, by the 6-inch width of the machine. Cut each sheet into 3 pieces.  Cook in boiling salted water until done, but it still retains a little "bite". Let cool and dry on a kitchen towel. The pasta sheets will have expanded significantly, but the width should fit in a lasagna pan. 

 

For the Béchamel, melt Butter in a pan, add the Flour and cook until lightly colored. Add the fish stock or hydrating water, and cook down; it should thicken and reduce. Add the Milk, and cook until it thickens. Grate in a bit of Nutmeg, season with Salt.  Add a bit of the Bechamel to a lasagna pan to prevent the pasta from sticking, or use a bit of oil.

Roughly chop the Bacalao and Scallops, and saute in Olive Oil a few minutes until just cooked. Sprinkle with a bit of Flour and cook out the raw flavor. 

Add the Samfaina, stir to combine, and cook a together a little longer. If Oil starts separating, dust with a bit of Flour and cook a bit to bind it all together. Taste and adjust Salt.

Bacalao and scallops combined with Samfaina

Roughly divide the filling in the pan into six sections, then lay a snake of filling on each pasta sheet, across the 6-inch dimension. Roll each up and put, seam-side down, in the lasagna pan. I separate them a bit (groups of 3) so I will be able to use a spatula and pull out a serving at a time.

Cover (but don't smother) with Bechamel, then top with grated Manchego. 

Broil until the sauce starts bubbling and the cheese browns attractively. Carefully pull out the Canelones and plate; two pieces this size should be enough for each person.

Mahi Mahi al Pil Pil

I think we may have broken new ground here: the classic Basque Pil Pil sauce is always made with bacalao -- salt cod. We repeated the modern poaching-in-olive-oil technique that we used recently, but this time for mahi mahi. It rendered a lower quantity of the gelatin required to make this wonderful emulsified sauce than bacalao, but it was plenty to sauce the fish: like bacalao, the fish -- along with good olive oil -- produced its own hollandaise/mayonnaise-like sauce, super rich. In tonight's experiment, we also tried a sea trout because it had a thick subcutaneous layer of fat, but it didn't render the gelatin like bacalao does, so it could not make its own sauce.

Mahi Mahi and Sea Trout with Pil Pil sauce, shishito peppers, potatoes

We reasoned that a cold-water fish with a layer of fat would work like cod, from which bacalao is made, so we got sea trout (150g); it looks very much like salmon.  We also wanted to try a warm-water fish like we find when we visit Florida, so we got mahi mahi (270g). The quantities don't really matter here, the technique does.

We put each fish in its own small pan, skin side up (the skin sticks if it's touching the bottom), and covered with tasty extra virgin oil; we added a couple cloves of garlic to each. Heat up each to poach the fish, and hopefully release some precious gelatin which will act as an emulsifier.  Keep the oil well below boiling of water so you don't evaporate off any rendered gelatin. The trout released no gelatin, but the mahi mahi seemed to release a little.  The oil was about 90C/194F.

We pulled the trout out after about 15 minutes, but the mahi mahi is a more dense fish so we left it for about 30 minutes. Our theory is that the gelatin comes from just under the skin, so we pulled off the skin and added it back to the hot oil to cook another 10 minutes. We strained the oil into a measuring cup and let it settle, and after another 10 minutes or so were delighted to see oil on top and something that looked like heavier, water-based gelatin on the bottom. I separated most of the oil off and poured the gelatin portion into a tall narrow glass to separate further.

Oil on the top, gelatin on the bottom

I slurped the bottom layer of what we optimistically assumed was gelatin with a turkey baster and transferred it into a cool skillet. I then whipped this a few minutes with a fine mesh strainer to beat air into it and was very happy to see a foam form, the precursor to an emulsion. I added some of the now-cooled oil little by little to establish the emulsified sauce.

Whipping the gelatin until a white foam is established

It seemed more thin than the bacalao-based emulsion but I kept adding oil and it built up nicely. I had the heat on as low as it can go on my cooktop, but I'm not sure I needed any heat at all -- I think too much heat would cause the sauce to break.

Add the fishy oil little by little at first, more aggressively when the sauce is established

Once well-established I could add more oil with impunity. This 19 second video should show the sauce coming together.

The sauce was rich with olive oil flavor, a fine quality oil pays off here since it's really the only ingredient.   It wasn't seasoned with anything, so when we plated, we added some salt and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

What did we learn?

I've not seen recipes for pil pil using anything than bacalao. There are "shrimp pil pil" or "gambas al pil pil" but these are really shrimp in oil with garlic and hot chili pepper: "gambas al ajillo" and not an emulsified sauce at all.

Bacalao isn't the only fish from which gelatin can be extracted to use as an emulsifier for pil pil sauce. but not all fish will release gelatin. We have no idea which will and which won't, but mahi mahi definitely will. 

Next Steps

We'd like to repeat the experiment with the easier-to-find dried bacalao, the kind that's as hard as a sheet of plywood, and encrusted in salt. This is the classic form, and has to be hydrated with fresh water for a couple days. It has skin, and usually has bones which we're hope will be easy to remove once poached.  This is the baseline that all other work should really start from, and we're quite certain that will work fine.

Can we cook the bacalao with a minimum amount of olive oil using a sous vide technique? Use only the amount of oil you'd need for the sauce, maybe 200 ml, not the pots full we need for poaching. Freeze the olive oil solid (so it doesn't squirt out) and place in a vacuum bag with the hydrated bacalao and a couple cloves of garlic. Cook at the same 90C/195F for 30 minutes or so and check for rendered gelatin.

If sous vide works, can we use a lower, fish-friendly temperature, e.g., 50C/125F instead of the 90C/195F we used today?  We could hold the fish almost indefinitely without fear of over cooking, as long as we need to render gelatin.

Can we get gelatin from skinless, boneless bacalao that's now showing up in regular gringo grocery stores? This would make it much more accessible.

Can we season the sauce as we're building the emulsion? Salt seems easy, since salt cod's full of it. Can we add some lemon juice or white wine, or would those denature the gelatin and ruin the sauce?

Is the garlic important? In old school Catalan and Provençal aioli, garlic is the emulsifier. It's a very difficult sauce to make as it's a weak emulsifier and it breaks in the blink of an eye. Once we've established above what works with garlic, does the quality suffer without the garlic?