Newfoundland Fish and Brewis

As tradition built it

Newfoundland Fish and Brewis

Serves 4. Soaked 6 to 8 hours or overnight, then about 30 minutes.

Ingredients

• 450g salt cod
• 4 cakes Purity hard bread
• 6 slices salt pork, about 7.5cm long and 5mm thick

Method

1. Soak the salt cod and the hard bread in cold water in two separate bowls, 6 to 8 hours or overnight.
2. Drain both and cover them again with cold water.
3. Bring the fish to a slow boil and simmer about 20 minutes. Drain it, skin and bone it, and flake it.
4. Bring the hard bread to a slow boil and simmer about 5 minutes. Drain it.
5. Squeeze the water out of the bread and mix in the fish.
6. Fry the salt pork in a pan over a low heat until all the fat has run and the pieces are golden. These are the scrunchions.
7. Spoon the fat over the fish and brewis and scatter the scrunchions on top.

Notes

The dish is a direct expression of the outport fishery's two most durable staples, hard bread and salt cod, eaten together because both, separately, were built to survive a long voyage or a lean season.

The recipe is Christopher Mitchelmore's, of Live Rural NL. Purity Factories, which bakes the hard bread, soaks it 12 to 24 hours, fries the scrunchions with onion, and serves boiled potatoes. Mitchelmore's own 2012 version uses 2 lb of fish and a cup of salt pork and offers a drawn butter of onion, flour and water. Fisherman's brewis, from Powell's Supermarkets, uses fresh cod mashed through.

What a modern chef changes

Salinity judged by taste, texture rebuilt in two stages

Cross-refs Rung 06, salt cod and salt beef rehydration

Method

1. Rehydrate the salt cod in a series of measured, timed water changes rather than by eye, judging salinity by tasting a small poached piece at each change, a genuine refinement of the traditional overnight-soak skill rather than a replacement for it.
2. Dehydrate a portion of the hard bread crumbs after soaking and drying them again, then blitz them in the spice grinder into a fine dust to scatter over the top for texture, since the traditional dish's only textural contrast is the scrunchions themselves.
3. Render the scrunchions sous vide first at a low, controlled temperature to melt out the fat evenly, then finish them hard and fast on the Big Green Egg's plancha for the final crisp, a two-stage version of a technique tradition already does in one.