Bacalao for Mexican Christmas Dinner: A Fishy Tale
Edit. I had planned this as a happy Christmas post. I had no idea that as I poked about in the world of bacalao I would find the fishy underside that I talk about at the end. It left me slightly at a loss though, thinking some reality check on the extra-Norwegian world of imitations, might be helpful I have gone ahead and posted.
Across Mexico, chunks of bacalao are sitting in water, being de-salted for dinner at midnight on the 24th. The middle class Christmas dinner reflects the Spanish tradition. A dish of bacalao a la vizcaína (salt cod Biscay-style) is an indispensable part of this meal, along with spaghetti or cannelloni, and either a turkey or a leg of pork stuffed with meat, fruits, and nuts.
The most upmarket bacalao in the "deli" Europea at about $22 a kilo
Discarded boxes outside Europea
Display of bacalao in Superama, the upmarket branch of Walmart
Norwegian bacalao in Walmart along with the necessary olives
Once the bacalao is de-salted, it is boiled in fresh water, drained, broken into pieces, and the spines are picked out. The onion and garlic are sautéed in olive oil, tomatoes are added, and the sauce simmered for a while. Then to finish, the cod, small peeled potatoes, olives, parsley, pepper, and salt if it is necessary are stirred in and the whole heated gently.
To learn more about bacalao, I consulted Ove Fossa who is President of the Norwegian commission for the Slow Food Ark of Taste to preserve the traditional ways of making the very finest bacalao. Here’s a link to his brochure which is quite fascinating. None of the bacalao in Mexico is of this quality, I fear.
For the grade of bacalao that ends up in Mexico, he recommended the Wikipedia articles.
For bacalao, salted and dried fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dried_and_salted_cod
For stockfish, dried, unsalted fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish
The two articles seem to be fairly accurate.
Both kinds are most often made from cod, generally considered the best quality, but several other species are used as well.
Due to climatic differences, the two are made in different areas. Drying unsalted fish can only be done in cold weather in the north, mainly the Lofoten islands, and Finnmark. Bacalao (klippfisk in Norwegian) is made in the south, near the towns of Ålesund and Kristiansund, where the fish would easily spoil unless salted.
Ove also kindly passed along export figures. Although at this time of year, it’s easy to think that Mexico must be gobbling up the entire Norwegian supply, in fact it’s a fairly small market.
The major buyers of Norwegian bacalao are Brasil (35.9 %), Portugal (30.5 %), the Dominican Republic (6.4 %), Jamaica, Congo, Angola and Italy (each 3-4 %) and then Mexico (2.8 %). The numbers are from 2010, they vary a little from one year to the next.
Norwegian stockfish on the other hand is sold almost exclusively to Italy (57.1 %) and Nigeria (30 %).
The export value of Norwegian bacalao in 2010 was 3.6 billion Norwegian kroner (610 million USD), and stockfish 450 million (76 mill USD). In comparison, the export value of farmed salmon was 30 billion (5,1 billion USD).
There’s a huge market in Mexico, though, for something cheaper perhaps because the rapidly expanding middle class wants to taste the kinds of Christmas dishes that once only the wealthy could afford. Last week Buena Mesa, the food page of one of Mexico’s main newspapers, Reforma, gave hints on how to detect imitation bacalao. Any so-called bacalao without spines was not authentic.
I’d seen lots of imitation bacalao myself in early December in La Viga, the wholesale fish market in Mexico City. It was made of robalo (Centroponus undecimalis), of sierra (in the mackerel family), and, as below, manta ray (aletas means wings).
Bacalao of manta ray in wholesale market at about $3.00 a kilo
Five foot cube of shark "bacalao" from the state of Campeche in the wholesale market
Sharks' fins in the wholesale market
What are restaurants using, one wonders? What controls, if any, are there on the sale of endangered species in the wholesale market? What controls, if any, are there on the naming of bacalao? What is the connection between the rise of shark fin bacalao and the controversy over shark’s fin soup, descrbed here by Fuchsia Dunlop. Clearly as the Reforma article shows, some people are worried about imitations. I would love to know more if any readers have any comments.
The first time I had Bacalao a la Vizcaina was at a New Years celebration in Cd. Satélite, Edo. de México. It was at room temperature and as a guest, I was served the prune that garnished it. I smiled, but I was not really pleased.
I’ve had it since a few times, and it seems to me a major production with not much result. So it may be for those of us not born to the tradition.
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
Hi Michael, Happy Christmas out there in Michoacan. Yes, I can take it or leave it too. But it is iconic in Mexico.
greeks love love love their fried bacalao – it’s a tradition for palm sunday and the annunciation of the virgin mary
we can get unfilleted bacalo (ie with bones) and filleted bacalao (virtually boneless – only the spine, which is easily removed – it’s more expensive than the unfilleted)
i recall proof-reading a recent paper (about two years ago) which described the market for salted bacalao – if i remember rightly, people prefer to buy frozen bacalao these days in europe becos it’s easier to prepare than worrying about desalinating it
Is frozen bacalao salted and then defrosted?
You should have been there!
In november I attended a seminar at NTNU (The University of Trondheim) with the theme “Food beyond borders”.
This was part of project called “Beyond Borders. Transnational movements through history.” and part oft this project is “Local history as bordercrossing history”, and this year they focused on food; how it crosses borders, how it affects local communities; as trade, new productions, new practice, new food habits …
Among the presentations were Rebecca Earle, Warwick University, on “New world foods in the early modern world”, Daniel Winfree Papuga with “Bakalar, to je lipa stvar! Norwegian dried cod as part of ritual culture in Croatia” and Odd W. Williamsen “”The kong of bacalhau: Saltmatured, dry cod from Norway via Hambur til Brazil 1850 – “.
Thank you for an interesting blog to read. All the best for the holliday and the new year.
I would have loved to have been there, Randi. I know Rebecca and her work but not the other two. And bacalao is a great boundary-crossing food.
I hope you had a good Christmas and thanks for the comments on the blog.
The word bacalao is Basque (hence ‘viscayana’), and before refrigeration all bacalao was solld salted/dried, as the fish came originally to Europe from the Grand Banks during the late middle ages (no cod ever swam in Spanish or Italian waters). The Norwegians didn’t salt cod untll the seventeenth century, when Scottish traders brought salt (without tax) to the Nordic Kingdom. Before that, the vikings made Stockfish, unsalted. Kristiansund became the hub of bacalao production in Europe (Alesund followed later). The buyers came from Spain, Brazil and the whole Caribbean. Still today, the people of Kristiansund have developed a like for bacalao a la Vizcayana, which they consider their own ‘national’ dish, tomatoes, bell peppers and all
Substitution was soon made from other fishes in the Caribbean. Imported cod became too expensive. Only whitefish with very low fat content, like the winter cod in the Lofoten, can be dried to high quality, fatty fish like mackerel will turn rancid, skates, rays an shark will give a poor ammonia smelling dried fish.
If you don’t like bacalao, think of this: you shouldn’t compare dried salted fish with fresh fish. bacalao is not an ‘instant’ fresh cod, it is not what nescafé tries to be for coffee. In the same way cheese is not ‘instant’ milk. The typical odour and taste are part of the value. When you look like it this way, the taste becomes much more interesting.
Hi Nick, thanks for all the helpful comments. Campeche, where much of this other “bacalao” comes from is really part of the Caribbean in culinary terms, at least along the coast. I had thought the imitations were rather recent but of course it makes much more sense if they go back a long way.
I like bacalao. I’m just not frightfully fond of tomato sauces in general so the a la viscaína is not my preferred way of preparing it.
Rachel; at 4: Frozen bacalao can be either, as the Spanish don’t have e different word for fresh cod. Desalted frozen bacalao is popular in modern Portugal en sold next to frozen unsalted cod.
In France, another codless country, the salted cod was namend ‘morue’. When finally fresh cod became available, they named it first ‘morue fraiche’. Under Dutch influence they now call salted cod ‘morue’ and fresh ‘cabillaud’, from Dutch ‘kabeljauw’ which in it’s turn comes from the Basque word.
O, and a happy Christmas to you all
Oh and Nick, a related point that I meant to make before but I’ll make it here since we’re talking about the spread of preserved fish.
One of Hawaii’s signature dishes is lomi lomi salmon, salt salmon with raw onions and tomatoes. Say to people in the islands that there is no salmon there and they have a hard time accepting it. It’s another historical remnant, this time of the salmon salting industry on the west coast of the US and Canada. Barrels were shipped to Hawaii in the nineteenth century and now it continues to be made specifically for the Hawaiian market.
Can’t imagine Christmas without it. I make it every Christmas Eve here in Austin as a lifeline to the beautiful Christmas traditions of my country I miss so much.
Will has taken to it, and I make it more for him than for me, really. Just finished eating our traditional leftovers breakfast: torta de bacalao. Happy Holidays Rachel!
Oh Claudia, I’m so glad you do. I’ve just been making mincepies as a lifeline to the beautiful holiday customs of my native England. See you soon! We arrive the 1st.
Hi Rachel, I think Japan has a Salted salmon tradition too. With all the Japanese in Hawaii, there might b a link? Japanese told me you cannot eat raw (wild) salmon because of possible parasites (cod worms), that’s why it’s traditionally salted.
I think the limiting factor on salted fish were the historic Royal monopolies on producing and selling salt (la gabelle etc.). Salt was relatively rare, certainly in Europe. Therefore food technology avoided the use of salt. Fish was air dried, meat & cheeses were preserved in ash, food was fermented end/or stored in oil to economize on salt. Norway didn’t have a salt tax, it barely produced salt. That’s why fish salting with imported salt from Setubal or Ibiza became such an important trade there. As the fish went back to the households in the south, it carried with it a welcome supply (extra legal) of salt that could be partly recuperated.
The other advantage of salted fish over dried is rehydration time. Salt being hygroscopic, the product is swelled in a matter of hours, where stockfish takes days to rehydrate. For the latter, the scandinavians recurred to swelling the fish with lye (lutefisk). This speeds up the process dramatically, but strongly affects the taste. Finally, skinless and boneless bacalao is (was) considered the absolute qiality in Europe. It was packed in fine tinplate boxes with big markings “Sin piel ni espinas’. It is the most frequently seen Spanish expression in Norway.
Hi Nick, Interesting as usual. It’s hard to underestimate the influence of Asians on the food of Hawaii, the Japanese prominent among them. But salted salmon is not one of the influences. It predates the arrival of Japanese indentured laborers. It was shipped from the west coast of America in barrels for the provisioning of whalers who wintered in the islands. The native Hawaiians acquired a taste for it.
Agreed about the scarcity and expense of salt due to goverment monopolies/taxes and not just in Europe. I’d add competition for its use in industrial processes. To continue along your line of thought, I think it explains the prevalence of unsalted or lightly salted staples (bread, rice) along with salty relishes. You are going to use your scarce salt for preserving and then use what you have preserved to liven up the staple. I hadn’t thought of salted fish being a source of recovered salt in the Med. Do you have a reference for this? Fascinating.
I often think how our understanding of food history is warped by the fact that we have essentially free three things that were scarce or laborious to acquire in most places through most of history: salt, fuel, and and water.
I hadn’t considered the difference in rehydrating dried and salted fish. Very interesting.
re rehydration:
I suppose it’s hard to find a piece of stockfish in Mexico? It is hard here in Brussels. Everyone knows the word from songs ans folklore, but I haven’t seen stockfish for sale here in my lifetime. The reason? Klipfish (bacalao) is so much more convenient. Only certain groups in Holland and Italy (Venice) consume it, probably out of religious tradition. In Faer Oer and Norway today, they eat stockfish dry, unsoaked, as a snack.
It’s fun to experiment with: where bacalao is a split cod, stockfish comes as a round fish. The former feels leathery, the latter is like a log of wood. Bacalao sinks in water, stockfish floats like a cork and seems hydrofobic.
As for the reference? I’ll check Madeleine Ferrières, but it’s pure poor man’s thrift, surely. My mother in law (whos suffered enough during and after WW2) would not think to waste the boiling water of spaghetti. That would go into next day’s soup. On the same level, cattle and other farm animals crave for salt. So why should soaking water full of expensive salt be wasted?
Nick, it wouldn’t even cross my mind to try to find stockfish in Mexico. I missed the Oxford Symposium on preserved foods a few years back when the Fosse brothers brought all kinds of samples. Too bad.
Interesting about spaghetti water for soup. A while back on this blog I suggested that it was highly improbable that individual households in the past used plentiful water for spaghetti both because of the cost of the water and the cost of the fuel. Even here in Mexico where I buy purified water I am hesitant to use quarts and quarts for spaghetti. Using it for soup would solve the water problem, though not the fuel problem.
frozen bacalao isnt salted in the first place – it’s sold as frozen fish fillets (expensive), or the meat is shaped into moulded pieces, usually rounds (combined with other ingredients – it’s cheaper in this form)
i only buy it salted, but it needs a lot of preparation before being used; the only reason i dont buy the frozen variety is becos my husband says the taste isnt the same (i think it’s all in the mind – it looks mass produced whereas the salted bacalao is sold in huge pieces with its silvery skin)
OK, so it’s what I would call cod. Interesting story about your husband’s tastes.
Not only the water, Rachel, the nutritious starch in it. Regarding spaghetti, (boiled in lavish amounts of water) it seems this food only became popular in Italy with growing wealth after 1945.
Yup, so much for all those rules about quantities of water etc.
A comment on Nick Trachet on Norway and salt. In Norway salt was produced from seawater along the coast. Import took over when the prices went down around 1600, and when it became an order to use spanish seasalt in production for export, also from 1600 (maby also because the norwegian salt was less pure and not so strong).
Archbishop Olaus Magnus writes in his “History on the Nordic People” (Historia de gentibus sptentrionalibus) from 1555, that even though the Norwegians produced enough salt for own use and some for export, the people there prefered both the fish and the meat mildly salted. He also writes that during war the enemy tries to hinder the import of salt to the opponent, but the nordic contries get by on its own, Norway because it uses it allready uses its own salt, and Sweden, who usually imports salt, get by by starting up its own boiling down seawater into salt.
Thanks, Randi. The plentiful wood was the key, clearly. I appreciate the refining of Nick’s position.
I am Saint Lucian and I grew up on what we call ‘salt fish” . We stew it with onions, garlic and other vegetables and have it for breakfast. We also mix it in a flour batter to fry “accras” I am going to Mexico City for 3 months and knew that in Puerto Rico I saw baccalao being used and just wanted to know if it was the same in other Spanish territories.
Glad to know and to keep my eye out for other versions.
Thank you
Lucky you off to Mexico City. Mexicans do eat salt fish but mainly at Christmas and mainly the well to do. It’s not as common as in the Caribbean. And accra comes from a West African fried bean dish, I think. Love to hear more about all this.
I have my grandmothers recipe for bacalao al la viscaina, which i copied down over 40 years ago. I hadn’t made for years, but one of my friends also has fond memories of it. I was surprised to find how expensive bacalao is now in the US. The local Spanish import store sells a very tasty, boned version for clost to $18/lb, the Mexican tienda has a saltier version for around $9/lb. Nonetheless, we’ve been experimenting with different preparations. The flavor reminds be of my beloved abuela.
A lovely story, JoAnn. I saw shoppers taking little boxes out of Central Market, the upmarket grocery store here in Texas, at Christmas. Nothing like the towering displays in Mexico.
“quite fascinating” is an understated way of describing the Slow Food brochure (PDF) you copied/linked. it should induce any bacalao skeptic to be more open-minded. (i have been curious ever since i saw some in a pail on the floor of a store in a Portuguese neighborhood, and am drying a home-salted filet in my refrigerator.) at some point, the brochure evolved into a more convenient form:
https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/slow-food-presidia/more-og-romsdal-salt-cod/