Recipe: Plantain Canapés with Crispy Salt Cod
Salt cod, salted and dried fish, is just as familiar in Suriname as a cheese sandwich is here. A persistent myth is that making it takes forever. What a shame, because homemade salt cod with a good layer of butter, pepper and pickles on a Surinamese bread roll is fantastic. Raghenie Bhawanie shows you how to prepare salt cod much faster. And then: combine it with plantain, a brilliant combination!
To debunk the myth about the cooking time, I’ll give you a glimpse behind the salt-cod smoke screen. It’s often thought that you have to remove the bones from the salt cod, desalt it and fry it for a long time.
Salt cod fillet
The last two points are true, but take much less time than you think, and I’d like to debunk the first point by highlighting a miracle of our time: salt cod fillet. Forget doomsday scenarios of ‘a bone got stuck in his throat’ and spending hours picking through fish – life is too short for that.
Canapé
In Cuba I ate salt cod (bacalao) on a slice of plantain. A golden combo. Not entirely new, of course; anyone who has ever eaten the Creole dish Heri Heri knows how well the salty and sweet elements of the two components go together. A canapé is French fanciness for finger food – often a piece of bread or a cracker with a savory topping. I find that plantain much more delicious than a piece of bread.
The idea is that you eat a canapé in one bite, and that’s very easy to do with this one too. I serve this as an amuse-bouche at dinner parties when I really want to pull out all the stops. Guaranteed success.
How to make plantain canapés with crispy salt cod
- Rinse as much salt as possible off the salt cod under running water and put the fish in a pan of cold water. Bring to the boil and cook the salt cod over low heat for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse clean once more in a colander and taste a small piece of fish. If the salt cod is still very salty, repeat the cooking process. If not, continue.
- Flake the cooled fish with your fingers. It will fall apart easily. You want small pieces of salt cod, but not crumbs. You should still be able to tell that you’re eating fish. At the same time, check for bones (you never know) and leave to drain.
- Heat oil in a frying pan and fry the salt cod. As soon as the salt cod has absorbed the oil, add the onion. Push the salt cod and onion to the edges of the pan and make room in the center. Spoon the tomato purée into the center and cook off its acidity by briefly frying it. Mix the tomato purée with the onion and salt cod. Cook everything over low heat, tossing regularly, for about 20 minutes until golden brown and very crispy.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in another pan and fry the plantain slices on both sides until golden brown over medium heat, about 1½ minutes per side. Serve the crispy salt cod on the plantain slices.
- Sometimes I put a little shrimp sambal under the salt cod for some heat, and if I’m feeling really adventurous, an wafer-thin slice of pickled radish.
Title: Madame Jeanette
Author: Raghenie Bhawanie
Price: €34,99
Publisher: Nijgh & van Ditmar
In Madame Jeanette, Raghenie serves more than a hundred dishes, most of them with vegetables in the starring role. Think bami, pom, Surinamese brown beans with rice, chutney, pickles and mango pie. She also explains in this book that food with heat doesn’t always have to be spicy, and that Surinamese food certainly doesn’t have to be heavy, difficult or time-consuming.
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