Baked Potatoes, Salt Cod, and Parsley
A beautiful marriage of textures, this: creamy salt cod purée and crisp potato skins. As baked potatoes go, this is a lot of work, and much washing up too, but the result is worth the trouble. Salt cod is not easy to track down; Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese markets and major supermarkets are your best bet. The recipe makes rather too much filling, but it is not worth dealing with a smaller quantity of salt cod. There’s no hardship anyway—simply keep the leftover purée in the fridge and eat it the next day with fingers of hot toast.
Recipe information
Yield
enough for 2
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Soak the salt cod in cold water for a good twenty-four hours, changing the water regularly.
Step 2
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). After scrubbing the potatoes well and pricking them here and there with a fork, put them in to bake. Once they have been baking for half an hour or so, drain the fish, put it in a deep pan, cover it with fresh cold water, then bring to a boil. When the water is bubbling, turn off the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Let it sit for fifteen minutes, then drain. Remove and discard the bones and skin. A messy job, and one of the few kitchen jobs for which I will put on a pair of rubber gloves. Put the salt cod into a food processor. Warm the milk (I use the steam nozzle on the coffee machine) and the olive oil separately.
Step 3
Peel and coarsely chop the garlic and add it to the fish. Blitz, pouring in the milk and olive oil in a steady stream, letting the mixture whip to a sloppy cream.
Step 4
Remove the potatoes from the oven, slit them open, and scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon, then add it to the salt cod. Blitz briefly to mix, then add the lemon juice, the chopped parsley leaves, and a few grinds of the pepper mill. Pile the purée into the potato skins and return to the hot oven for fifteen minutes.
