Baccalà with roasted peppers, olives and anchovy sauce with Sardinian bread

Award winning chef Francesco Mazzei takes us through a southern Italian dish focusing on baccalà - dried cod.

 

Ingredients

500g air-dried cod (baccalà)
1.5l milk
10ml garlic oil
1 bay leaf
1.5l sunflower oil
4 Roman peppers
1 garlic head
100g anchovies
25g black olives
20g 'pane carasau' Sardinian flatbread
Salt and pepper

 

Method

  • Soak the dried cod in running water for at least 24hours. Take the fish out of the water, remove the spine and skin before putting it in a pan with  1lt of milk and 1lt of water, a bay leaf  and leave to simmer until the cod is cooked (about 2 hours).

  • In the meantime, prepare the anchovy sauce. Peel and slice the garlic and put it into a small saucepan with the rest of the milk and cook for 10-15 minutes. Then drain it, but keep the milk to adjust the sauce at the end, add the anchovies to the cooked garlic and leave to cook until the anchovies are completely disintegrated, at this point put the anchovies in the blender and regulate the density of the sauce with the drained milk.

  • Once the baccalà is cooked, drain it, and again, keep the milk mixture on the side for the finishing of the baccalà blending. Put the strained fish in a mixing bowl at high speed so it breaks into small pieces flakes, then start to emulsify it with the oil and the milk mixture. Season with garlic oil, salt and white pepper.

  • Place the whole pepper into the preheated, 250°C oven. Once soft, peel off the skin and place on serving plate with the warm baccalà on top and drizzle with a little anchovy sauce, garnish the olives around it and serve with Carasau Sardinian bread.