Buber's Basque Page: Pil-Pil Cod

Cut the salted con into 8x8 pieces. You take the salted cod and must allow it to lose most of its salt by putting it in cold water for 48 hours into the fridge, changing water three times, at least.

Slice the garlic and golden it in a quarter litre of olive oil (good quality olive oil, one degre of acidity). When the garlic is golden, you take them out of the oil and keep them aside for later use.

Allow the oil to cool and place the pieces of desalted of cod with its skin face upwards, (there's much discussing about the skin's face position business, half of the population thinks the skin must be upwards, the other half think the opposite, we ourselves think that this matter is absolutely irrelevant). At this stage the most difficult task starts: the cacerole, which must be places near the cooker fire but not on it (it's very important that the fish doesn't fry), with the cod and oil is gently moved from side to side, so that the oil become thick mixed up with the cod's jelly, the final result must be something similar to a soft mayonese sauce.

The presentation of this dish is decorated with the slices of golden garlic you had left aside and a pinch of hot pepper.

Here in the Basque Country this recipe is considered to be very difficult. If anybody could perform this dish the first time, please let us know, because you'd be considered a very good chef.

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plateruena at gmail dot com 08-Jun-2006 18:05	`#3156`
`Hi there... I've put a photographic and video version of the bacalao al pil pil recipe online, if you're interested in seeing the traditional method in action take a look at http://www.plateruena.com buber.. I have been a fan of your site for years, you want to link to or use the video's you're most welcome... as long as we I (we) get a credit. ongi pasa`

plateruena at G mail dot com
26-Feb-2006 10:34 #2626

I have managed this first time everytime, thought not from this actual recipe... the whisking concept is an interesting one, not come across that... but if you are in a high volume cod environment, where there is plenty of skin about, a trick used by basque chefs is to take any spare cod skin, put it in a sieve and then swirl that around in the warm olive oil - thats how the resturants short cut the process, and I'll probably have my pilotas snipped for telling you !!!

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Last updated: Sun, 01 Jul 2007 - 23:07:00

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