Cod & Potatoes
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Simple Cooking ISSUE NO. 77 FOUR DOLLARS Hanging Out at Cod & Potatoes the No-Name Eaten with butter and potatoes, cod forms a basic ration on which man could thrive indefinitely. A Diner Story (with Recipes) —Evelene Spencer & John Cobb, FISH COOKERY HEN, TWENTY YEARS BACK, I wrote a pamphlet on THE STORY SO FAR: On a run-down part of Water Street chowder,* I thought I had said all I would ever sits a tiny, brightly painted, nameless diner. Alec, our Whave to say on the subject of cod and potatoes. narrator, who owns a used-book store in the row of Not that I thought I’d summed the matter up—it was just Victorian commercial buildings that loom beside it, has that the other great dish that combined the two, fish and gradually become a regular, getting to know the Profes- chips, fell outside my purview. Gerald Priestland pro- sor—the burly, bearded proprietor and grill cook—and duced an entire book on the subject—FRYING TONIGHT: Greg—the Gen-X waitron-busboy-dishwasher. THE S AGA OF F ISH AND C HIPS—and while he devotes a whole chapter to the evolution of fish fryers and another to HE FOLLOWING DAY, I ARRIVED AT THE NO-NAME just a little before closing time, and in a very black paper wrappings, he provides not a single recipe. That’s Tmood. Earlier, I had driven halfway across the because, like you and me, Priestland goes to a fish fry state to Ruxford, a once prosperous mill town, to place for them, which is as it should be. There’s no attend their library’s annual book sale. Ruxford has satisfactory way of making fish and chips at home been in a slow state of decline for over half a century, without owning two deep-fat fryers—and most of us, and a good number of its citizens have been fading these days, don’t own even one. Consequently, while the away right along with it. This means that each year dish makes an excellent subject for a journalist—espe- another bunch of attics have to be shoveled out—to the cially a British journalist, which Priestland is—it is only profit not only of used-book sellers like me but also of of limited interest to a cook. antique dealers, who descend on the Congregational So, there it is: chowder on the one side and fish Church’s rummage sale like a pack of wolves. and chips on the other, and in the middle...plain old cod In fact, to prevent us book dealers from trampling and potatoes. What is there to say about that? Matt and innocent bystanders to death during our inevitable I make it, we eat it, we like it very much. But this is such feeding frenzy, the library staff wisely lets us in an simple eating that it would be hard to work up a recipe hour before opening the doors to the general public. As for it, let alone an essay: there just isn’t anything there is my habit, I had arrived early enough to be one of the to write about. Or so thought I—or would have, had I ever first in line. However, despite this fact, as I worked my bothered to think about it at all. way through the piles of books heaped on the trestle Still, stick to a trade long enough and second tables that filled the largest room in the community chances come along, even third and fourth ones. Mine center, I had the eerie feeling that someone had been came when I read a surprisingly affecting passage in there ahead of me. *DOWNEAST CHOWDER (Jackdaw Press, 1982). An expanded It doesn’t take long in this business before your version of this work appears in our book SERIOUS PIG. sixth sense can tell you when a collection has already been gone over by a competitor—not because the pick- ings are slim but because there’s a void that corresponds exactly to another dealer’s taste. It’s like opening a box of chocolates and discovering that everything with a cream filling has been taken. Clearly, someone had shown up the night before and cajoled their way in, by pleading— for example—that they had to take a sick child to the hospital first thing in the morning. CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 Mark Kurlansky’s introduction to his COD: A BIOGRAPHY Newfoundland cooking flash by your eyes: salt pork OF THE F ISH THAT C HANGED THE W ORLD. There, he describes and salt beef (where do they get that these days?) and his trip out to the cod banks off Newfoundland in a small hardtack and potatoes. But the real luxury, the single fishing boat. The purpose of the trip was catching cod, ingredient that pulls everything else into perspective, but only to tag and release them. The cod stock has been is that incredibly fresh piece of cod. dangerously depleted, and the Canadian government Fish and brewis and New England fish chowder has halted commercial fishing until the fish rebound, have followed a very similar evolutionary path, the something that these fishermen were monitoring. latter being properly made today with salt pork and Unlike most fish, cod can take the rough handling butter and milk and crackers and potatoes. Except, necessary to tag them, but occasionally one does die and when we think about chowder, the traditional dish we it then becomes the fishermen’s supper. have in mind is made with fresh, not salt, cod. Howev- Bernard kneels over a portable Sterno stove at the stern. er, “traditional” dishes change through time like every- He uses his thick fishing knife to dice fatback and salt thing else. It’s been so long since salt cod played a beef and peel and slice potatoes. He soaks pieces of major role in Yankee cooking, chowder-making in- hardtack and sautés it all in the pork fat with some cluded, that it has pretty much fallen off the charts— sliced onion. Then he fillets the cod in four knife strokes apart from a lingering taste for codfish cakes and salt per side, skins the fillets with two more, and before cod hash. On the other hand, Newfoundland contin- throwing the carcass over, opens it up, sees it is a female, ued to be a major producer of salt cod right through the and removes the roe. Holding it by a gill over the gunwale, last century, and dishes there that call for it still retain he makes two quick cuts and rips out the throat piece, their currency—at least in traditional recipe collec- “the cod tongue,” before dropping the body in the sea.... Bernard dumps the food on a big baking sheet, tions. This is what makes the fresh fish in Bernard’s which they put on a plank across one of the holds, and version so conspicuously luxurious. they stand in the hold where the catch should have been and with plastic forks start eating toward the center. The dish, called Fishermen’s Brewis, is monochromatic, with off-white pork fat and off-white ALT COD IS POVERTY FOOD. The people who ate it potatoes and occasional darker pieces of salt beef. What regularly were as likely to live in fishing commu- stands out is the stark whiteness of the thick flakes of nities as anywhere else, before the production of ice fresh cod. This is the meal they grew up on.... S and other modern preserving techniques made it possi- Perhaps it’s my Yankee upbringing, but reading ble to bring home the catch fresh after days, even weeks, this passage moved me even as it made me hungry. at sea. Those who were better off looked down on salt cod Fishermen’s brewis or, more often, just fish and and on those who were forced to eat it for any other brewis, is to Newfoundland what fish chowder is to reason than an occasional display of Yankee frugality. New England. The word “brewis” (pronounced That good things can be done with salt cod will “brooze”—hence the old joke about the new parson get no argument from me, but taken strictly as a piece who, offered fish and brewis for breakfast, replied that of fish, it is no special treat. And how could it be? I don’t he would be happy to have the fish, and perhaps just think there’s a soul who would deny that while you can one brew) is very old indeed. get both pleasure and nourishment from a piece of However, in its classic form, it is not nearly as jerky you cannot reconstitute it back to anything with richly worked out—let alone as delicious—as the dish the taste and texture of a cut of beef. This is doubly true that Bernard prepared. “Brewis” shares the same with something as evanescently flavored and delicately roots as “broth,” and it refers to a dish of dried bread tender as a piece of fresh fish. softened with drippings or water. In Newfoundland, Certainly, in New England, by the middle of the the bread in question is hardtack, and a traditional nineteenth century, the poor were happily giving up recipe goes something like this: salted fish in favor of fresh, as that became more affordable. This little affected the salt cod industry, FISH & BREWIS which was able to sell abroad the bulk of what it produced. In 1874 alone, the fishing town of Gloucester Hardtack as required • Salt cod as required produced fifty-three million pounds of salt cod, export- Salt pork as required ing the premium cuts to Portugal and Spain, the worst THE NIGHT BEFORE: Break the hardtack into pieces, allow- of it to feed slaves in plantations in the West Indies (and ing 1 piece per person.