Using up the rest of the fish from when I previously made my little crumbed bacalhau balls didn’t take long, especially when I had this recipe from the Food Safari cookbook by Maeve O’Meara; something I’d wanted to try for ages. It looks and sounds like a perfect recipe for a relatively light meal. The recipe calls for cornbread to be used in the crunchy topping so I ventured to Petersham in search of it. None of the bakeries had it, as well as the Portuguese deli and just as I was about to give up I stopped into a butcher and found it sitting up on the counter. Nice one. Seeing we were in little Portugal we couldn’t leave without dropping into La Patisserie for a box of custard tarts to take home. Something a little sweet after the salty.
bacalhau com broa
Serves 2
- 600 g thick bacalhau fillet, soaked in water 24hrs, with water changed 4 times
- milk
- ½ red onion, cut into chunks
- 3 dried bay leaves
- 3 cloves garlic, 2 left whole, 1 chopped
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- 1 kg small potatoes
- olive oil
- salt
- 1 red capsicum, cut into strips
- 4 brown onions, finely sliced
- 4 thick slices of cornbread, crust removed
- 4 flat-leaf parsley stalks, leaves picked and chopped
- 3 egg yolks
- ¾ cup pitted black olives
Drain the bacalhau, place it in a saucepan and cover with milk. Add the red onion, bay leaves, whole garlic and peppercorns. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Roast the potatoes with olive oil and salt in a hot oven until golden. Halfway through add the strips of capsicum.
Heat more olive oil in a saucepan over high heat and fry the onion until browned. Reduce the heat and cook gently until soft and almost caramelised.
Finely crumble or grate the cornbread into a bowl and mix with the chopped garlic, parsley and egg yolks.
Remove the fish from the milk, remove the skin and any bones and break the fish into chunks.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the roasted potatoes on a board and flatten each one. Lay them in a baking dish and cover with the fish, followed by the cooked onions and the breadcrumb mixture. Drizzle with olive oil and season with black pepper. Stud the olives all over and scatter with strips of roasted capsicum. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Drizzle with a little more olive oil before serving.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
This sounds so tasty – beautiful recipe John!
Another tasty cod recipe, I wish my family had a better repertoire for Easter during my childhood.
You really are on a Portuguese spree right now! Delish. I watched them make this on Food Safari and it looked gorgeous. Hope it was as tasty as it looks here.
What a lucky find with the cornbread! I love your presentation here – makes me wanna grab your fork! hahaha
That’s hot in more ways than one. Dried chillis get the ninja thumbs-up.
And to finish off with those delicious Portuguese egg tarts thereafter..
Love the rustic presentation. And the Portugese tarts with their burnished tops, of course!
I’ve been eyeing off the bacalhau at the Central Market since your last post using this ingredient. This looks so delicious and I was given the Food Safari cookbook for Xmas – time to pull it out!