Salt Cod and French Cuisine

The Promenade du Peyrou, a popular park in Montpellier. Note the seemingly-obligatory stature of Louis IV, and, behind it, the water palace, terminus of the Aqueduc Saint-Clément.

Things have been a bit slow here on the travel front. Our friends Mark and Mary have returned to their compact nest in Paris, after passing the lock-down and it’s extended aftermath here in Montpellier. And, more to the point, they took their drivers’ licenses with them! Oh, we could take a train somewhere—and eventually will, even for a day trip—but it’s just less fun without them. And anyway, still no cafés and restaurants! 

So for the moment we’ll turn our attention elsewhere. I'll take a step off the deep end here and talk about cooking (not a subject for which I am well known…) 

We saw this dried and salted cod at a market in Castelnau, a suburban part of Montpellier. It looks a bit… odd, because we’re not used to seeing it. But it has sustained life in Europe, and other parts of the world, for centuries. 

Salt cod at the market in Castelnau.

Salt cod. Traditionally plentiful in the North Atlantic, cod is an oily fish, making it easier to preserve than most fish (or so I’m told). We first ran into dried cod when we were in Bergen, Norway (that post is here), a few years back. It was a major export for centuries. Thanks to the Hanseatic League, a trading and defensive organization operating in Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages, cod from Norway was traded throughout northern and western Europe, providing much-needed protein to people far from the ocean. A few weeks later we learned more about the League and its extensive trading activates when we were in Hamburg, one of the League’s major base cities. This trade made the city, and its merchants, very rich. This wealth is still visible today in both the preserved warehouses/homes of these early traders, and the modern city itself.

 

Modern-day Bergen, Norway; the original Hanseatic League buildings are in the center, behind the sailboats.

Warehouses in Hamburg, Germany originally built to hold trade goods. 

 Seeing cod in that market in the South of France reminded me of Bergen, and Hamburg, and brought back to me the history—the very long history—of France, and Europe, and how these countries had been interrelated for many centuries. Which reminded me, again, of the main reasons we are here in Europe in the first place, to experience and learn about that history, and the connections that emerged. And broke. And reformed. Repeat for a thousand years… 

Shortly after buying our cod and leaving the market in Castelnau we found this little gem, a complete surprise in what we thought was a relatively new suburb of Montpellier.

Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Castelnau-le-Lez, in what is now a suburb of Montpellier. 

This church was built at the end of the 12^th Century. It turns out Castelnau has been a suburb of Montpellier for over 800 years! And, before that, it was a Roman outpost along the via Domitia (a Roman road built around 120 BCE that runs through the south of France... er, Gaul… from Spain to the Italian Alps). 

At any rate, the church at Castelnau put me in mind of these other churches we’d seen in the region. One we’d found a bit south of Montpellier in another “modern” suburb, Lattes. And one we’d found returning from some other adventure somewhere. There is a certain "family resemblance” among them; they were all built around the same time (13 Century).

 

Clockwise from top left: Église Saint-Laurent de Lattes; Chapelle St Laurent; Église Saint-Martin; Abbaye de Gellone, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. All within an hour's drive!

And so, with all these historical associations in mind, I bought some. Of the salt cod, I mean. (Remember the salt cod that started all this?) Because, actually, we intended to eat it.

 

         French Cuisine

While France has a reputation for very high-end cuisine, the food that people eat in their daily lives, la vie quotidian, is mostly based on what people in the region have been eating for hundreds of years. (In addition to, of course, the big three: hamburgers—incredibly popular around the world—and pizza—also incredibly popular, and kebab, popular not so much in the US but certainly everywhere else.) 

Salt cod is one of the fundamental ingredients still widely used in many dishes, even though modern refrigeration has eliminated the need for the traditional salting. We ran into it in Spain, under the name bacalao; it’s used in many of the tapas we enjoyed. And here in France, or at least in this part of France, it’s often known as morue. 

One dish in particular using morue that has captured our imagination (and our taste buds!) is brandade de morue, or just brandade. The de-salted salt cod is blended with olive oil and garlic (of course it is! This is the South of France!) and cream. It can be spread on bread, or, the way we wanted to make it, mixed with mashed potatoes (brandade de morue parmentière). We’d had it at restaurants several times (restaurants! Oh, remember restaurants? Sitting at a table with many other people around and having food brought to you? We haven’t been in one of those for a long time!). 

Morue from the North Atlantic
--- photo from https://environnement.savoir.fr/morue-cabillaud/

Finding this salt cod at the market spurred us to make our own version. I started with a video on making Brandade de morue nîmoise, Brandade from the city of Nîmes, which is considered to be the origin of the dish (so, presumably, authentic!). We soaked the cod for three days, changing the water morning and evening. I spend some time picking out tiny bones and peeling off the skin (the piece we got was not particularly good; the result of arriving just as the market was closing up for the day, and, possibly, being a foreigner!) 

Next we boiled, then mashed, the potatoes with plenty of olive oil. The now mostly un-salty cod was poached in milk, broken into bits and added to the potatoes. Mixing in the cooking milk pretty much finished the dish, except for the final baking in the oven.

 

Our authentic brandade de morue parmentière.

Next time we’ll try it with fresh fish, cod or some other white fish. Meanwhile we’re discovering ever more variants. At another market in Montpellier we bought a brandade intended to be spread on bread (no potatoes in this one, just olive oil and garlic and cream). We ended up mixing it with our own mashed potatoes. Quite good!

The market at Les Arceaux, the Arches, named for the aqueduct running above (the one that terminates at the Promenade du Peyrou shown in the photo at the start of  the blog.

Another street in the Les Arceaux neighborhood of Montpellier.

More salt cod, this from the Arceaux market. The random bits in the middle sell for about $10US/pound; the "cheeks" (a delicacy) on the left for almost twice that. Price of the fillets on the right is unknown...

What else? We’re busy making plans for future trips, a visit to California this summer, maybe a couple of weeks in Paris. Also, there’s still plenty of places to explore closer to Montpellier--but for the moment the cafés and restaurants are still closed. Plus, there is a strict 6PM curfew (now 7PM! Woo woo!), which kinda kills any desire to spend an overnight in a different city—to spend the evening on a different couch, in a different living room? The pandemic landscape is shifting, but nothing is as we expected it to be… still!

Street art, pasted on a wall in Montpellier. 

The text at the bottom of this public street art reads "Moi j'ai besoin d'espoir sinon je ne suis rien;" (Me, I am in need of hope; otherwise I am nothing) Fun fact:  dropping the apostrophe changes espoir to despoir, exchanging hope for despair.

Breaking news: I've passed my French driving license exam, and am now licensed to drive on two continents! (Well, as a "novice" driver I'm limited to 70MPH on the turnpikes for my first couple of years.) And, we have appointments for the vaccine. Get that car ready, we have a lot of lost time to make up for!!