[Sca-cooks] Lutefisk and strange dreams...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 9, 2006, at 5:01 AM, Ana L. Valdés wrote:

> But I don't know anybody younger than 70 years old who really buys  
> or eats the lutefish!

It's probably a fact, although an unfortunate one, that many younger  
people don't see the point of any food that takes several days to  
prepare. Lutefisk needs to be soaked, not only in water, but at some  
point, in lye or potash solution, to tenderize it. The soaking in lye  
(the "lute" in "lutefisk" refers to this lye, apparently) not only  
tenderizes the fish, but also begins to break down some proteins and  
produce an odor that some find disagreeable. It is not the horrible,  
deathly stench some people claim it is, but then some people will  
complain about the smell of liederkranz cheese for hours on end, too.  
I'd rather smell the cheese or the fish than listen to the whining,  
myself. But ultimately, I think the elders have grown to love certain  
foods they were compelled by necessity to appreciate, or at least  
tolerate. Younger people, many of whom have a somewhat higher  
standard of living (in some ways) than their great-grandparents did,  
generally have access to food that can be shipped quickly while  
fresh, fresh meat year round, and have never really needed to depend  
on something like lutefisk, and so, have probably never developed an  
appreciation for it.

> People here buy for Christmas ham, pickled sill, meatballs,  
> different porridges made of rice or wheat, meatjellies, but you  
> seldom see lutefish in the Christmas table, with the said  
> exception, the older people, who remember or keep their childhood  
> uses.
> Which is the difference between the lutefish and what the  
> portuguese call "bacalao", or "cabello"?

Bacalao is salted before being air-dried. By tradition, lutefisk (or,  
rather, the dried cod -- torski? or stockfisk -- from which it is  
made) is just dried in the wind until quite hard and dry, more so  
than bacalao needs to be. You can soak bacalao in fresh water and it  
will return, more or less, to some semblance of fresh fish, while  
lutefisk needs to be soaked in an alkaloid solution (generally lye)  
to speed up the soaking and tenderizing process (medieval English  
recipes advise the cook to beat the stockfish for an hour with a  
wooden mallet, instead). It then needs further soaking in several  
changes of fresh water (sometimes it's put in a cloth bag and placed  
in a running stream, tied to a stake or a large rock), but it takes a  
couple of days to remove the lye residue or it really is inedible.

The effect of the lye soaking is such that, when the fish is cooked,  
it is almost translucent, and almost jelly-like in texture (and yes,  
quite tender in comparison to bacalao). Traditional flavorings  
involve some combination of butter and mustard; the fish itself has  
little flavor of its own, IMO.

> I have eaten bacalao for Lent since my family was practising  
> Catholics and the bacalao was done in a kind of stew, with  
> chickpeas and tomatoes.
> Is the same stuff?

It's not really the same thing, although you could probably use  
unsalted, dried cod (soaked in water) in the dish you describe above.  
It would probably be good, but not the same.

The Goya company makes a canned bacalao in tomato sauce -- it may  
also contain olives -- that's quite good quality, as canned fish goes...

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04