Remojón Granadino

The salad of Granada: flaked salt cod and sweet oranges with black olives, good olive oil, and a scarlet scatter of pomegranate

Origin: Granada, Andalusia, Spain

From the journey of Pomegranate.

Remojón is the salad of Granada, the Andalusian city that wears the pomegranate as its name and on its arms, and it gathers in a single dish the fruits the Arabs left to the south of Spain: the orange, the olive, and the pomegranate. The base is salt cod, soaked, flaked, and either left raw or briefly grilled, dressed with segments of sweet orange, sliced spring onion, good black olives, a hard-boiled egg, and an emphatic amount of fine Andalusian olive oil sharpened with sherry vinegar. Over the top goes a handful of pomegranate seeds, scarlet against the white fish and the orange, at once a garnish and the dish's sweet-sour grace note. It is winter and Lenten food, made when the oranges and the late pomegranates of Andalucía are both in season and the salt cod of the Catholic fast is on every table, and it is one of the clearest survivals of the Moorish kitchen in modern Spain: the sweet fruit and the salt fish, the oil and the bright acid, the cool composed plate. The name comes from remojar, to soak, for both the cod and the dried bread that sometimes joins it must be soaked back to softness; but the soul of the dish is the meeting of salt, sweet, and sour, crowned with the pomegranate of the city that bears its name.

Ingredients

Salad

  • 300 g salt cod (bacalao), soaked in cold water for 24–36 hours, changing the water several times
  • 3 large sweet oranges
  • 2 spring onions, finely sliced (or 1/2 mild white onion, thinly sliced)
  • 80 g good black olives, such as Aragón or Kalamata
  • 2 hard-boiled eggs, quartered
  • 1 large pomegranate, seeds only

Dressing

  • 6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1.5 tbsp sherry vinegar
  • salt, only if needed (the cod is salty)
  • freshly ground black pepper

Method

  1. Drain the soaked salt cod and taste a sliver: it should be pleasantly seasoned, not aggressively salty. If still too salty, soak longer. Pat dry, then flake the flesh into bite-sized pieces, discarding any skin and bone.
  2. Peel the oranges, removing all the white pith, and cut into segments or thin rounds, working over a bowl to catch the juice.
  3. Whisk the olive oil and sherry vinegar with any caught orange juice and a grind of pepper to make the dressing. Taste before adding salt.
  4. Arrange the orange and flaked cod over a wide platter. Scatter over the spring onions and black olives and tuck in the quartered eggs.
  5. Spoon the dressing generously over the whole plate.
  6. Scatter the pomegranate seeds over the top and serve at once, at room temperature, with bread.

Notes

Remojón is endlessly variable across Granada and Almería: some cooks add boiled potato, some include soaked dried bread, some use tuna or sardines in place of salt cod. The constant is the meeting of orange, olive, oil, and pomegranate. It is best made a little ahead and left for the flavours to mingle, but the pomegranate and egg should be added only at serving. For a quicker version, good tinned tuna in oil can stand in for the soaked salt cod.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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