It's mood-changing, it's wonderfully pungent - it's saltfish

Last weekend, I contributed to the ongoing depletion of stocks of the world's most popular fish by purchasing some salt cod from a Spanish deli. Like most British people, I hardly ever eat salt cod. As a nation, we are excessively fond of fresh cod, yet pay almost no attention to the salted variety. In this, we differ from the whole of southern Europe, where fresh cod is almost never eaten, but salt cod is considered a delicacy. In Portugal, such is the popularity of bacalhau, as salt cod is known, that it is practically a national dish.

Admittedly, this preference arose from necessity. Cod is not found in the Mediterranean, nor in the waters surrounding Portugal, and so the Portuguese who began fishing for it in the North Sea in the Middle Ages had to find a way to preserve the fish while they travelled back home. With the advent of refrigeration this has long since stopped being the case - yet the Portuguese, Spanish and Italians have all continued to favour salt cod. And they are right to do so. Fresh cod is an exceptionally dull fish. No matter how it is cooked, nor what sauce it is served with, there is no getting round the essential tastelessness of those oversized flakes of flesh.

Because of its blandness, fresh cod is really only useful as a vehicle for other flavours, or as a bulking agent; the challenge for the chef is to utilise its texture, while imparting flavour through other ingredients. But with salt cod the reverse is true. Salting imparts a wonderful pungency, and the challenge now is to dispense with the texture (which is unappealing) while deploying the taste as a kind of extract. It is not surprising that dishes calling for salt cod (or for other types of saltfish, such as the anchovy) tend to be pates, stews, soups or purees.

In southern Europe, there is a whole repertoire based on the judicious application of saltfish to such dishes. In Spain and Portugal, salt cod is widely used in potato fritters and in soups. In Italy, there's a salt cod, chickpea and spinach stew (baccala in zimino) that is extremely tasty, and the Italians also commonly use salted anchovies to flavour roast or stewed meats. (This is an excellent practice: just see how much difference adding chopped anchovy to a beef casserole makes.) But the most spectacular saltfish dish is undoubtedly the Provencale speciality brandade de morue, which is what I attempted last weekend. In its original form, this is a kind of puree made just from salt cod, garlic, olive oil and milk, although nowadays it is likely to be bulked out with potato. And it really is truly astonishing - one of those rare dishes that, in a single mouthful, will completely transform your mood. It's just a pity that in Britain, owing to our proximity to the North Sea, we have had to make do all this time with battered cod and chips.

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