50 Recipes, #48: Salt cod cakes

[nonelvis]

I've never cooked with salt cod, and since it's plentiful this time of year (presumably because so many Catholic families around here use it in the Feast of the Seven Fishes), I figured it was long past time to try making something with it myself. I used a recipe from Jasper White's Summer Shack Cookbook, which could not have been easier and made absolutely lovely cod cakes. All we needed on the side was homemade tartar sauce and some broccoli rabe steamed with garlic, hot pepper, and olive oil. Perfect.

Comments

[platypus]

It's kind of bizarre that I grew up Catholic in a heavily Catholic area and never heard of the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Though Wisconsin tends to be a bit more German-Catholic than Italian.

[nonelvis]

I guess it must be an Italian-only tradition? I'm certainly no expert on Catholic feasts!

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

It is, indeed, an Italian tradition. My German-American Great-Great-Aunt Tessie used to visit my Italian-American grandmother for Christmas every year and stay for a few days. She hated fish. She said that the whole thing with no meat on Fridays that lasted up until Vatican II in the 1960s was because of the popes from Genoa hundreds of years ago who wanted to help out the poor starving fisherman in Genoa. No amount of historical information, logic, or begging could convince my grandmother to serve meat either on Friday or on Christmas Eve.