Bacalao (salted cod) Mousse | Pjenica od Bakalara

If you don’t know what Bacalao is, then let me spell it out for you, it’s a salted dried cod. And yes, that doesn’t sound too delicious.

If you use a whole salted cod, then you will need to soak it atleast overnight, if not for a few days and it will need several rinses in cool water before it can be used. So you salt it and then you slowly get rid of all the salt? Yes!

But you can actually buy salted cod in your local deli that is already cut into pieces so that you don’t need to skin and debone a whole fish, but you’ll still need to do the water baths to get rid of the salt.

This recipe is great for using as a starter if you have a whole fish or packet and don’t want to use the whole thing in a stew. It’s quite a bland mousse, so the addition of horseradish is welcome.

Ingredients:

300 grams of salted cod (Bacalao) pieces

10 mls extra-virgin olive oil

10 mls thickened cream

One tablespoon of white horseradish (up to personal preference)

Salt, to taste

White pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Place the salted cod pieces into a large bowl of cold water, cover with cling wrap and leave out or put in the fridge for 48 hours. During the 48 hours, change the water up to three times.
2. Once your 48 hours is up, add one litre of cold water to a saucepan, add the watered-down salted cod and bring up to a boil. Once the water hits a boil, leave for 10 minutes to cook through.
3. Drain the cod, allow to cool, add to a blender and pulse until a slightly smooth mixture forms. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Add the olive oil and continue to pulse until you get a smooth, mousse-like mixture.
5. Add the cream and pulse further until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it. Taste and add the horseradish if you want.
6. To serve, you can put it into any kind of serving dish or mould. Or you can transfer the mixture into a piping bag and pipe out the mixture onto crackers or toasted rounds of bread.

Let me know if you tried this super fish mousse and what you thought?

Dobar Tek! Zivjeli! (Bon Appetit! Cheers and let’s live!)