Bacalhau à Brás

Lisbon's salt cod shredded through matchstick potatoes and softly scrambled egg, finished with black olives and parsley

Origin: Lisbon & Portugal

From the journey of Potato.

Portugal claims a recipe for salt cod for every day of the year, and the number is usually given as three hundred and sixty-five. It is a boast rather than a count, but it points at something real: bacalhau is the defining protein of the Portuguese kitchen and has been since the fifteenth-century Newfoundland fisheries, and the fish is not native to Portuguese waters at all. Portuguese boats sailed to the Grand Banks for it, salted it aboard, and dried it ashore, and a country with an enormous fresh-fish coastline built its national dish on a preserved import from the North Atlantic. Bacalhau à Brás is among the best known of the recipes and is Lisbon's. Salt cod is soaked, poached, and pulled into shreds, then folded through fried matchstick potatoes and beaten egg over a low heat so that the egg sets softly around everything and binds it without becoming scrambled egg. It is finished with black olives and a great deal of parsley. The attribution is to a tavern keeper named Brás in the Bairro Alto, and the story goes no further than that; no date, no premises, and no documentation survive, which is the usual condition of a nineteenth-century Lisbon tavern dish. What is clear is that it belongs to the city rather than to the country, and that its close relative bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, from Porto, uses sliced rather than shredded potato and is baked. The potatoes are the technical problem. They must be cut as fine as matchsticks, fried until crisp, and folded in at the last moment; shop-bought straw potatoes are used by a great many Portuguese households without embarrassment. The egg must come off the heat while it still looks slightly underdone, because it goes on setting in the pan.

Ingredients

Fish

  • 500 g salt cod, thick loin pieces

Potatoes

  • 800 g floury potatoes, cut into fine matchsticks
  • 1 litre oil, for frying

Base

  • 2 onions, very thinly sliced
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 bay leaves

To bind

  • 8 eggs, lightly beaten

Seasoning

  • 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 1 salt, to taste

To finish

  • 100 g black olives, stoned
  • 1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Method

  1. Soak the salt cod in cold water in the refrigerator for thirty-six hours, changing the water at least four times.
  2. Change the water four times or more. Under-soaked bacalhau is inedibly salty and there is no correcting it once it is in the pan.
  3. Poach the soaked cod in barely simmering water for eight minutes, then drain, and when it is cool enough to handle remove the skin and bones and pull the flesh into fine shreds.
  4. Rinse the potato matchsticks in cold water until it runs clear and dry them thoroughly on a cloth.
  5. Fry them in batches at 180°C until crisp and pale gold, drain on paper, and salt them lightly. Keep them warm and uncovered.
  6. Cover them and they steam and go limp within minutes, which defeats the whole texture of the dish.
  7. In a wide pan, soften the onions and garlic in the olive oil with the bay leaves over a low heat for fifteen minutes until sweet and translucent, without colouring.
  8. Add the shredded cod and turn it through the onions for two minutes.
  9. Take the pan off the heat and tip in the fried potatoes, folding them through.
  10. Pour in the beaten eggs and return the pan to a very low heat, folding constantly with a spatula.
  11. Take it off while the egg still looks a little wetter than you want. It carries on setting in the pan and an egg cooked to the point of looking right in the pan is dry on the plate.
  12. Season with pepper and a little salt if it needs it, scatter the olives and a great deal of parsley over, and serve immediately.

Notes

Soak the cod properly with several changes of water. Cut the potatoes as fine as you can and never cover them after frying. The egg goes in off the heat and comes off underdone. It cannot be made in advance, reheated, or held; bacalhau à brás has a working life of about two minutes. Bought straw potatoes are widely used in Portugal and are an entirely respectable shortcut. The parsley is measured in handfuls rather than spoonfuls.

The Gastrographer

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