So for Christmas this year, I really had a craving for roast duck. No problem with that. The only issue being that my Beloved doesn’t eat meat. He does, however, consume fish with gusto. What would be festive enough in the fish department for Christmas dinner, easy on the cook who is also roasting a bird at the same time, and tasting delicious not just as a main, but as a side dish too.
The answer was brandade. Which is the French name for salt cod whipped beautifully with cream and/or milk, olive oil and garlic.
Lots of garlic.
Now if you have a food processor, this is the easiest fancy dish you’ll ever make. And after you’ve made it, you can do what I always do. Decant it into a pretty casserole dish, top it with grated Swiss cheese, and leave it until half an hour before dinner. If you’re roasting a duck, that’s the time you take the bird out and let it sit, so the oven is totally free.
Ah, convenience. I love planning things so they look like I worked myself into a hot mess in the kitchen, while I’m actually coolly figuring out how to plate everything so it looks its holiday best.
Okay. Now I’ll tell you the secrets of brandade. Don’t listen to the recipes that get all complicated (or do listen to them if you feel complicated and have the time to follow your heart in that matter). Or have a look at my essay about it in Jam Today. That pretty much sums it up.
But if you don’t have a copy of Jam Today handy (and why don’t you, might I ask?), here is another summary:
First: you need salt cod.
Once again, this is simpler than it seems if you just can plan ahead. Most things are simpler, I find, if you can plan ahead, and this is no exception.
You can buy salt cod if your local store has it. In which case, start desalting it two days ahead of time. Just rinse the salt off the cod, lay the pieces flat in a dish, cover them with water and refrigerate. Every so often in the next two days taste the water. Salty? Dump it out and replace with fresh water. Do this until the water stops tasting salty every time you go near it. Then you can cautiously taste a bit of the fish. If it tastes more fish than salt, you’re good to go.
But perhaps your local market doesn’t sell salt cod. Or perhaps it does, but it turns out it’s a lot more expensive than the fresh cod. Or the frozen cod. This is the case in our market, where a pound of frozen Canadian cod goes for $9 a pound. Which is a great deal. And which means there’s usually a pound of it in our home freezer, since there are a lot of ways to cook cod. (Here’s one: Defrost. Mix some cream with a little Dijon mustard and grated swiss cheese. Cover filets with this mixture. Bake until almost done, then flash under the broiler to brown the cheese. Heaven.)
However, I wasn’t looking for fresh cod, but for salt cod, which is the essential ingredient in brandade (except for garlic, of course). Which meant salting it myself. Which added a bit more lag time onto the planning stages.
Three days ahead: Defrosted cod in the refrigerator.
Two days ahead: Lay the cod in a casserole dish, poured lots of salt on top, turned the pieces over. More salt. Covered the dish. Back in the fridge.
One day ahead: Drained out water from the dish. Poured more salt on top of the pieces. Turned them over. Repeated salt.
Christmas day: Rinsed the cod. Tasted. Could use a little less salt, so filled the casserole up with water to await cooking.
Easy? Yep, you bet. And you can start the salting process as early as you want—a week ahead if you think of it. That just means you have to start the desalting process earlier too. You catch my drift? The more time you salt the cod, the saltier it gets, which means you need more time to desalt.
So you’re saying to yourself, but if I desalt it, why am I salting it in the first place? Well, let me tell you, salting a piece of fish does wonders for its taste and structure. It gets firmer. It tastes more of the sea. (Try salting a trout the day before you rinse it, grill it, and serve it with soy sauce and lemon. You’ll see what I mean).
Now it’s almost time for Christmas dinner. If you’re me, you peer at the duck, which has got about another half hour in the oven, and the roasting carrots that need about another hour. So you figure it’s time to get started on the brandade.
Get out your cream. Your milk. Your olive oil. Place next to your food processor for handy accessibility. Get as many garlic cloves as you think you’ll want (for a pound of cod, I use five. This is at least three more than any non garlic fanatic will desire, so you do what smells best to you.)
Get out a skillet big enough to hold all the pieces of cod. Lay them in there, cover them with water. Turn the heat on underneath. Watch it! Just wait for a bubble to appear, one or two, indicating a full simmer is imminent, and turn off the heat. You’re going to let the cod cook in the residual heat for up to ten minutes.
At five minutes, pick up the thinnest piece. Does it start pulling apart, which indicates it’s done? Then throw it in the food processor with the garlic. Repeat with all the cod until all the pieces are cooked through but not overcooked. Cream the fish with the garlic, while adding a bit of olive oil. Then add some cream. Then add some milk. Don’t worry at this point about overprocessing. And don’t worry too much about amounts. What you want is a white and fluffy mass of brandade, as rich or not as you like.
If you don’t want it too rich, and it hasn’t achieved whiteness and fluffiness, start adding a bit of milk, bit by bit.
Does it look right? Taste. Does it taste like a heavenly version of mashed potatoes? Then you’re good to go.
(In my case, I took my eye off the ball, and added a little too much milk. But no worries, I had a leftover baked potato in the fridge. I just scooped out the innards and added those. You could use mashed potatoes—they do that in Provence. Just don’t overprocess once the potatoes are in there. Keeps a better texture that way.)
Now you’ve got your brandade. Decant into a pretty casserole dish. Strew with grated swiss cheese. And await the moment, if you’re me, when you pull the duck out of the oven to sit for a half hour. Then put the casserole in the oven to cook (if you’re me) with the carrots.
Use the half hour to set the table, offer glasses of wine all around, and toss some arugula with a tiny bit of olive oil and a lot of squeezed lemon. Portion it out on the dinner plates to await results.
Then five minutes before, toast some sourdough slices. Drizzle them with olive oil and rub them with garlic (or alternatively, heat some olive oil and garlic in a pan, and fry the slices in that).
Is the brandade browned? If not, turn the broiler on low and watch it till it is.
Put a nice quarter of duck on one plate. Put two slices of toasted garlic bread on the other plate, with a nice mound of browned brandade beside it. Roasted carrots on both plates.
And serve it forth to great applause and cries of ‘You shouldn’t have’.
But you should have. How much you enjoy it, and enjoy watching your beloved enjoy it too tells you all you need to know.
And have a happy new year while you’re at it, too.
PS: For great leftovers, bake as many potatoes as you have people to feed. Remove the innards of the potatoes. Mash with leftover brandade. Replace in the potato skins, top with grated swiss cheese, a dribble of olive oil and a little paprika. Bake at 350 degrees for twenty minutes. A terrific lunch.