Les Marseillaises

Or: You're Soaking in It.

A chunk of dried salt cod was occupying valuable space in my refrigerator for months. It was given to me by my friend Craig, whose Azorean DNA won’t allow him to pass up snatching bits of bacalhau whenever it crosses his path. I thanked him for it, popped it into my messenger bag, and promptly forgot about it for a couple of days. Soon, an unfortunate odor began to rise from the bowels of my man purse, which reminded me of the neglected terrarium of a hermit crab I once kept in the 5th grade. Crystalized salt flaked its way through the gaps in its waxed paper wrapping and settled on the bottom, looking the way the shoulder of a person with dandruff might after wearing a black wool turtleneck for several hours.

I gave the bag a good airing and myself a good talking to.

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I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it: brandade de morue—that mash up of poached salt cod, garlic, olive oil, and potato the Mediterranean French love so much. I also knew precisely how I wanted to prepare it—authentically. I was convinced I’d read something somewhere about someone being impressed by the efficiency of the housewives of Marseille who, rather than waste time frequently changing their salt cod’s soaking water by hand, placed hunks of it in their toilet tanks so that, every time someone in the household spent a penny, their future dinner got a fresh change of water.

Was it M.F.K. Fisher? I tried to find mention of it among her essays, but came up short, thinking to myself, “That woman drank like a fish,” and moved on.

That rather uncharitable thought was swiftly followed by another one: "Well, so do I.”

Had I simply imagined the whole thing? To the best of my knowledge, I’m not historically prone to drunken, hallucinatory reading, so it must be true. It was flimsy logic, but I was determined to pull that salt cod off the refrigerator shelf, drop it in my toilet tank, grab a copy of The New Yorker, and get down to the business of “preparing dinner”.

My enthusiasm for using the commode as a handy kitchen tool was dampened over a Fisheresque liquid lunch with my friend Mei, a fellow food writer, who was dubious, to say the least.

"That might be okay for you here in San Francisco, but other places put all kinds of chemicals and shit in the water to keep the pipes from freezing during the winter." She made an excellent point. She also lives in Ireland, and wouldn't be making brandade "à la methode des femmes au foyer Marseillaises" any time soon.

Not that I blame her after hearing about how I planned to prepare it.

Deterred, I returned home and put the small brick of moisture bereft fish back where I’d found it until further notice. That night, I made a chicken salad for dinner, using tools found in no other room but my kitchen. It was a bland substitute my heart couldn’t fully embrace—it still yearned for brandade prepared the lazy Marseille housewife way.

Months passed, but a salted cod is a patient cod and can survive the wait. I no longer had the stomach to plunge the desiccated fish into the toilet tank, neither did I have the nerve to do it the bourgeois injustice of being soaked in freshly Britta-ed water. So the dried-out ingot of The Grand Banks languished between the jars of taramasalata and raspberry jam at the back of my fridge, which had no business living next to each other in the first place.

Inspiration arrived one morning as I used the smallest room. I could still use my toilet as a prep tool without resorting to using the water found inside it. If I soaked the cod in fresh water from the kitchen faucet, but taped a sign that simply read “COD!” above my toilet, it would serve as a reminder to change the water every time I needed a wee. I could have my fish cake and eat it, too, without encouraging my readers to do anything that might cause them to become physically ill. Or that might cause their loved ones to worry about the state of their mental health because they started dropping fish down the back of the shitter and calling it dinner.

Brandade de Morue

For those of you not fortunate enough to have half-Azorean friends, you may wish to consult your local codmonger or order your fish online. It isn’t too hard to find.

The following recipe is merely a guideline. Some people (like me) prefer it mixed with potato, others find that heretical. I found myself smearing a thin layer of goat cheese on my toasts before spooning on the brandade. I sometimes chop up cornichons and sprinkle them over the top. I say do whatever you like to your brandade. Don't worry about what the folks of Marseilles might think—people who put their salt cod in the toilet are not typically the type of people who are going to care too deeply what you do with yours.

Serves 4 people as a sociable appetizer or 1 recluse who will leave it on the kitchen counter uncovered and eat it all over the course of two days.

Ingredients:

• ½ pound of dried salt cod
• 1 medium-sized russet potato
• Fresh thyme sprigs (3 is probably sufficient, but I like to use more)
• Bay leaf, if you've got it
• 3 or 4 whole cloves of peeled garlic
• 2 cloves of minced garlic
• About ½ cup of olive oil
• About ¼ cup heavy cream
• A few squeezes of fresh lemon juice
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Finely chopped parsley and/or chopped cornichons for garnish.

Preparation:

1. Rinse the salt cod to make it less salt and more cod. Place in a dish of cold, clean water on your kitchen counter. Place in the refrigerator, if you have indoor cats. Replace the water each time you heed Nature's Call over the next 24 hours.

2. Bake your potato at 350°F for about an hour or until tender when stabbed by the tines of a fork or blade of a stiletto, whichever you have on hand. Cut potato in half while still warm, scooping the flesh from the skin, and fluffing with a fork to remove any major lumps. Set aside.

3. Take the salt cod out of its bath and place in a medium-sized saucepan over the stove, covering the fish with yet more fresh, cold water. Add the whole garlic cloves, thyme, and bay leaf. Simmer for about 10 minutes, turn off the heat and let steep for another 20 minutes.

4. Remove cod from poaching liquid, flake into the clean bowl of a stand mixer, ridding yourself of any bones and gross, slimy stuff you may find lurking in or around the cod flesh. Add the poached whole garlic to the bowl, discarding everything else.

5. Add fresh garlic, to make it extra French and, using the paddle attachment mix ingredients on medium. You don’t want to go any higher, unless you enjoy seeing bits of garlic and cod fly about the room.

6. Place flaked cod and both garlics in the bowl of a food processor with a good drizzle of olive oil. Pulse three staccato-like times. Now return your quarry to the stand mixer, and beat everything again until it begs for mercy.

7. Add cream, and continue to beat until thoroughly demoralized.

8. Remove work bowl from the stand mixer and incorporate the potato by hand. Add as much lemon juice, pepper, and salt as you like. Surprisingly, this salt cod dish will probably need a lot of salt added back in, since most of it has been flushed away. You may eat it now, if you must, but it is much better when placed in a baking dish or ramekin and shoved into a hot oven for about 10 minutes until it puffs and starts to brown a little, then shoved under the broiler until it continues to brown even more.

9. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with toasted baguette, cucumber slices, Chicken-in-a-Biskits, or just a spoon. Or, do as I'll admit to doing and leave it on the counter until fully cooled and have it that way (read: drink two glasses of rosé, get tired, go to bed, wake up in the morning, grab a fistful of cold brandade de morue that you forgot to put away the night before with a free hand, shove it in your mouth, and question everything about your life. Except maybe your cooking abilities because that lazy French housewife fish thing you made yesterday was so damned good.

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