Name: Home-Salted Salt Cod with Ginger and Tomatoes
Cuisine: United Kingdom
Ingredients: 4 pieces of salt cod, 175 g each, skinned salt and freshly ground black pepper; 20 fennel seeds; 2 hot or mild chillies, finely chopped; ½ tsp sugar; a 2.5 cm cube of peeled fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped; a fresh thyme sprig or ¼ tsp dried thyme; 1 glass dry white wine; 5 cm piece of orange peel (no pith); 2 cloves of garlic, crushed; 1 tin of tomatoes or 225 g passata; ½ a bay leaf; 2 tbsp vegetable oil; ½ a stick of celery, finely chopped; 1 small carrot, finely chopped; 1 large Spanish onion, peeled and chopped

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Classic Bull

By Stephen Bull

Published 2001

About

Most of the salt cod sold in Britain is well-nigh useless, having been so oversalted that every drop of moisture has been brutally sucked out, rendering the texture of the fish tough, fibrous, and impossible to reconstitute. This may have been fine in centuries past but now we don’t need to ensure the fish lasts for many months, nor can we trail it behind our boats as we navigate up the Dordogne from Bordeaux to Capdenac – as the wine barges used to, taking all of seven days. Anyway, saltin