Four ingredients and a circular patience: salt-cod, garlic, guindilla and oil, the cazuela swirled until the fish's own gelatin turns the oil into a pale emulsion. You want a sauce that coats a spoon. The name is the sound it makes.
It is a Basque dish of the coastal kitchen, built on bacalao soaked until it is only gently saline, and on the collagen in the skin. There is no cream, no flour, no stock.
Keep the heat low; a boil will break the emulsion. Serve in the cazuela. Txakoli, the slightly prickly white of the same coast. Bread for the sauce, which is the point of the exercise. Keep swirling. Don't walk away.
Method
- 01
Drain the desalted cod and pat it dry, then run your fingers over the loins to check for bones. Keep the skin on — it holds the collagen that will turn this oil into a sauce, and without it you haven't got a pil-pil. The fish should be only gently saline after its long soak. Four ingredients and a circular patience: that's the whole dish.
- 02
Warm the oil in a cazuela over low heat — low, always low. Gently fry the sliced garlic and the guindillas until the garlic is barely gold, then lift them out and reserve. If the garlic browns, start over; bitter garlic will haunt the emulsion. The oil should now smell of both, and that's the bath the cod will cook in.
- 03
Slip in the cod, skin side down, and cook 2 minutes. Then begin to swirl the cazuela in steady circles, tilting so the oil washes over the fish. Keep it up: the oil will thicken and turn opaque as the gelatin from the skin emulsifies it, 8 to 12 minutes. Do not let it boil — a boil will break the sauce, and there is no cream or flour to hide behind.
- 04
Turn the loins once, swirl again, and return the garlic and chiles to the pan. The sauce should coat a spoon in a pale, clinging ribbon — that's pil-pil, named for the sound it makes. Serve in the cazuela. Bread for the sauce, which is the point of the exercise; don't you dare waste it.
