A beautiful marriage of textures, this: creamy salt cod purĆ©e and crisp potato skins. As baked potatoes go, this is a lot of work, and much washing up too, but the result is worth the trouble. Salt cod is not easy to track down; Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese markets and major supermarkets are your best bet. The recipe makes rather too much filling, but it is not worth dealing with a smaller quantity of salt cod. Thereās no hardship anywayāsimply keep the leftover purĆ©e in the fridge and eat it the next day with fingers of hot toast.
Recipe information
Yield
enough for 2
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Soak the salt cod in cold water for a good twenty-four hours, changing the water regularly.
Step 2
Preheat the oven to 400Ā°F (200Ā°C). After scrubbing the potatoes well and pricking them here and there with a fork, put them in to bake. Once they have been baking for half an hour or so, drain the fish, put it in a deep pan, cover it with fresh cold water, then bring to a boil. When the water is bubbling, turn off the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Let it sit for fifteen minutes, then drain. Remove and discard the bones and skin. A messy job, and one of the few kitchen jobs for which I will put on a pair of rubber gloves. Put the salt cod into a food processor. Warm the milk (I use the steam nozzle on the coffee machine) and the olive oil separately.
Step 3
Peel and coarsely chop the garlic and add it to the fish. Blitz, pouring in the milk and olive oil in a steady stream, letting the mixture whip to a sloppy cream.
Step 4
Remove the potatoes from the oven, slit them open, and scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon, then add it to the salt cod. Blitz briefly to mix, then add the lemon juice, the chopped parsley leaves, and a few grinds of the pepper mill. Pile the purƩe into the potato skins and return to the hot oven for fifteen minutes.
