What a Catalan friend offers for dinner
Exqueixada: Shredded Salt Cod
Exqueixada, a dish of shredded salt cod was the star of the first course. It’s a Catalán classic, available ready prepared in the market, though our friend Jordi dismissed the very idea that he might buy it ready made instead of making it himself. Quite the best salt cod dish I have ever tasted.
There is nothing I love better when visiting a different place than a meal with a local friend. Much more interesting than restaurants, I always think, since restaurants are usually so attuned to tourist tastes. Jordi is an excellent cook, as I know from earlier visits, and proud of the foods of his part of Spain, so I was delighted when he prepared a splendid dinner for eight of us–visiting academics (Italy, the US, Mexico) and graduate students (Brazil, Argentina and Mexico).
Tuna stuffed peppers, goat cheese with onion marmalade, marinaded salmon, foie gras with fig jam
The caption left to right has more of the first course: small red peppers stuffed with tuna, local goat cheese smothered in onion marmalade, marinaded salmon, foie gras with fig jam.
Two kinds of sausage with cheese in olive oil, quail eggs with romesco sauce
And the rest of the first course, two kinds of the fine local sausage with cheese (yet to be identified) in olive oil, and quail eggs with romesco sauce.
The second course featured fish again.
Monkfish and clams in green sauce
This dish of monk fish and clams I think would be called Rap amb Salsa Verda in Catalán. The sauce I think is made of onions, garlic, parsley and some wine. I was slightly surprised to see Jordi boiling it vigorously in his large stewpot but monk fish stands up to that and it probably helped create the slightly thickened sauce. The parsley creates the green sauce (which once again goes to show you should never trace the genealogy of dishes by names as nothing could be further from a Mexican salsa verde). As always, the excellent bread of Girona to mop up the sauce.
The last course was a superior store bought white chocolate cheese cake. And liqueurs from Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Jordi’s raid on the world’s airport stores. And strong coffee.
How does one clean a computer keyboard after drooling all over it?
Nice looking food.
The Salsa Verda dish is pretty classic, the protein from the fish thickens the sauce. I’ve usually seen it make with hake which produces a lot of sauce. Another fish protein emulsion sauce is Bacalao al Pil-Pil, seeing this made really does look like magic.
Yes it was good food. And thanks for the information on the fish protein sauce. Quite new to me and fascinating. I will try to do the bacalau dish.
Wow! What wine was served with that exquisite meal?
Lots of local Catalonian whites. Couldn’t politely ask to see inside the wine bucket without interrupting the flow of conversation.
Bouillabaisse sauce/soup that is produced by the fish proteins and olive oil when you furiously boil them together, I imagine that there are many more.
Or presumably for the other fish soups, such as that sucquet of Catalonia.
Does the fish protein thickened soup gradually be come thicker as it cools? like gelatin? or a long boiled broth made of chicken or turkey bones? Does the thickening come from the boiling that leaches something out of the bones?
Not sure that I am the expert to ask on this. Gel from fish bones works like gel from meat. You don’t need to boil so long.