Marinated Baccala with Baby Fennel and Aceto Tradizionale

My great-grandparents immigrated to this country from Portugal many moons ago. I never had the chance to meet my great-grandfather because he passed away before I was born. But I remember stopping over to my great-grandmother's house as a child, usually right after seeing my grandmother who lived just up the street. 

My brother and I loved going over to see her because she always had treats for us, mainly cookies and Tang (hey, we were easy to please back then). But she also had plenty of snacks for any of the adults in the family that would pop over unexpectedly too.  

She was famous for her rice pudding, which to this day has yet to be duplicated exactly by anyone. She could make a killer vinaigrette. And she used a Portuguese staple, baccala, the main ingredient in this next recipe, to make her amazing cod-fish fritters which always went fast. 

Sundays used to be the day where everyone in the family would drop in to feast on her traditional Portuguese cooking, my grandfather's homemade wine, and to catch up on family gossip. Her cooking was by feel and sight, with no measuring, and it came out perfect and consistent every time, something that everyone can envy, chef or not. Pretty impressive for a woman that joined my great-grandfather in marriage and calling a new land home at the young age of 17. She kept on cooking until her passing well into her eighties. Seeing an ingredient like baccala in the book makes me nostalgic and I hope that Mario's preparation and handling of this ingredient pays her the homage that she deserves. 

I want to get started with the prep, but as the recipe notes mention, baccala needs to be soaked in water for 48 hours before it is used, making sure that the water is changed every 12 hours or so. 

Once that is out of the way I can start with the marinade for the fish. In a casserole dish, I combine the baccala, olive oil, champagne vinegar, thinly sliced red onion, lemon zest, red pepper flakes, peppercorns, and fennel fronds. I make sure the fish is well coated. The baccala gets marinated for four hours, turning after two hours for even marinating. 

Next is to bring some salted water to a boil and to set up an ice bath nearby. The baby fennel bulbs get blanched for almost a minute then removed and shocked in the ice bath. I then heat up the broiler, brush the fennel bulbs with olive oil and seasoning, and then broil the fennel until they are slightly charred and cooked through. Now the recipe calls for baby fennel bulbs but I was unable to find any babies at the market, so I bought the smallest ones that they had and cut them up smaller than I normally would have. You do what you have to do to make things work sometimes. 

Once the fennel is cooked, the fish is removed from the marinade and sliced very thin as if you were slicing a carpaccio. You'll need an extra sharp knife for the step which I am sure that by now is already in your arsenal. 

The marinade is strained and reserved. 

I am now ready to plate. The thin slices of baccala are placed on the plate with the fennel, the marinade is spooned over the fish and fennel, then the fish is drizzled with some really good extra-virgin olive oil and Aceto Tradzionale, or aged balsamic vinegar. I was able to get the aged balsamic that Mario recommends in the liner notes that is made by a friend of his in Italy. This stuff is quite expensive at $40 a bottle, and Mario notes that a small vial of aged balsamic vinegar is usually included in a brides dowry. I can understand why as a little goes a long way. 

Overall I didn't hate the dish is much as I thought that I would, but that's a far cry from me wanting to ever make this again. The marinade really made the fish pop and helped to cut some of the richness of the baccala, but I felt like the fennel was just 'there' and didn't really contribute much to the dish. Overall it's a little too light and skimpy in order for me to consider it an appetizer. Sorry Mario, but I much rather prefer my great-grandmother's way of handling baccala. 

Until next time...

5 Autumn Vegetables with Goat Ricotta and Pumpkinseed Oil

Happy new year! 

I'm back from my brief hiatus away from the blog and ready to dive in feet first. I hope all of you in blog-land had a great holiday season and are enjoying the new year. I certainly had a great Christmas with my wife and pet rabbit, and even scored some sweet gifts that'll make completing this blog all the more easier. My wife gets me so well that I even found a pair of these under the Christmas tree:

This time of year tends to be very busy for me at work. Add to that, my February cold came early this year, but regardless I'm excited to be continuing on with this project. We are rapidly approaching the 1-year anniversary of Babbo-at-home, and are nearly 50 recipes into the book. Not including my text books from culinary school, this is the most that I have ever cooked out of any one cookbook before. 

I'm starting to reach a point to where I am showing up to Whole Foods with book in hand and am checking out what's fresh and available and proceeding from there as opposed to picking my recipe ahead of time and hoping that my ingredients are on the shelf, which is kind of the main point of the book. Shopping as Italians would, with an open mind, a good eye, and no preconceived notions about what's going to be for dinner is Mario's main mantra. 

I also find that I am going to have to factor more time into the pre-planning of cooking these recipes as there are more and more specialty products popping up that need to be sourced out. If Whole Foods doesn't have it, shockingly so, then I have to hit up Google and go from there. So between allowing for sourcing, shipping times, and longer preparation of more complex recipes, my pace may slow a little, but this is where the real learning will kick in. With the exception of the drinks, many of the preparations from now on will be more complex. 

This inaugural 2015 post wasn't complex per se, but it did have quite a few ingredients that I was shocked to find available all in one convenient location. It's a beautiful looking appetizer that's vegetarian friendly. I let my wife pick this one out for me to make so let's see how it scored. 

I start by preheating my oven to 475°. Sharpen you knife because we're in for some chopping. I peel some butternut squash and cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. It gets tossed with some extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and some finely chopped sage, then put in the oven. 

While that's going, I take some scrubbed Jerusalem artichokes and slice them into 1/8 inch disks. I take the butternut out of the oven, which has now been in for a few minutes, and put the artichokes on the same sheet tray as the squash. The two should now cook at the same time. When done, they are set aside. 

Next I peel some parsnips, slice them into 1/4 inch disks, toss with olive oil, cumin, and seasoning, and roast them for about 7 minutes until they are cooked. The parsnips are set aside when fully cooked. 

I then bring some water up to a boil and set myself up with a water bath to blanch some julienned leeks. The leeks need only a few minutes in the boiling water before being shocked into the ice water. 

Sage oil is needed for the plating, so I took out my food processor and puréed sage leaves with olive oil, then strained it out. 

My last real prep work for this recipe is to julienne some celery root. It stays raw for this preparation. 

Okay now it's assembly time. The squash, artichokes, parsnips, leeks, and celery root get added to a mixing bowl with mizuna. Whole Foods didn't have any fresh mizuna for me, but luckily in the recipe notes Mario suggests frisée as a substitute, so I used that. The salad gets tossed with olive oil, sherry vinegar, and salt and pepper. 

The finished salad gets plated with a goat cheese smeared baguette slice, and drizzled with homemade sage oil (recipe on page 51) and pumpkin seed oil which Whole Foods had in their flavored oil aisle. 

My wife found this dish to be boring and uneventful. I thought that it was a nice salad. If we ate it in October our opinions might be better, but it served its purpose as a light, fresh, veggie starter. I'm not a fan of the goat cheese and probably never will be. But the rest of the dish is a keeper and something I may revisit next year when poking through a farmers market. 

Next up is a dish with a main ingredient close to my heart. Some that my Portuguese great-grandmother used often in her cooking. Until next time...