In the Middle Ages, the Church forbade eating meat and other foods during the Lenten period as an act of penance for the death of Jesus Christ. The meals had to be frugal and the attitude of recollection. This was relatively simple to carry out since most people were starving and in reality they celebrated Lent 365 days a year without knowing it.
However, people managed to get around the ban and even the ecclesiastics frequently reviewed the prohibited foods to apply new rules that would allow them to eat protein without offending the Church. Thus in Germany it was considered that eating snails did not break respect for Lent because in reality a snail is not meat. In other places it was considered that eating beaver was not a sin because, although it was a mammal, it lived in the water, with disastrous results for the species that is still almost extinct in Europe today. And it is that some of the arguments that were used to justify exceptions to the rule were of real blush
In the 15th century it was ruled that eating fish was not admonishable either, so the first fish farms were started in Central Europe, generally linked to monasteries, and from where the custom of eating carp at Christmas throughout the area comes from.
The rest of the European countries that did not have large rivers or abundant fluvial species threw themselves into the sea to fish. Since it was not possible to bring the fish ashore immediately, and even if it were, it would have spoiled in a very short time, some means of preservation had to be used. The most widespread was salting, used above all with the cod that abounded in the waters of the North Sea. The technique had been used since ancient times by the Vikings but was massively adopted by Basque, Portuguese, French and English fishermen because salt was relatively easy to obtain in their countries of origin. The papal bull ensured that already at the beginning of the 16th century there were cod salting factories installed by the Basques on the Canadian coast. Such was the demand that the Icelanders dedicated - and still do - all the cod fishery for export so that they almost do not eat it. In fact, until recently they didn't even have recipes that had cod as an ingredient and they must have copied them from the Portuguesers and Spaniards.
Cod was for many centuries the only fish that the poor could afford and it was not until well into the 20th century, with the industrialization of dry ice, that fresh fish reached everywhere.
By then an intense gastronomy had already developed around cod, especially in countries such as Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.
The Aragonese-style cod meatballs are one of those culinary treasures that, as you can see, owes its appearance to gluttonous priests who were looking for a way to break their own rules.
Aragon is a region in Spain with Zaragoza city as capital. It does not have coast line.
INGREDIENTS (4 people)
- 500 grams (1.1 lbs) of potatoes
- 300 grams (10 oz) of salted cod
- 2 large ripe tomatoes
- 2 eggs
- 2 cloves of garlic
- Chopped parsley
- Salt
- Wheat flour
- extra virgin olive oil
- Optional: a hot pepper
First of all we desalt the cod, preferably loin so as not to have to go looking for and removing the bones, in plenty of water that we will change every 6 hours for 24 hours.
Once the time has elapsed, we extract the cod and let it drain for a while.
Boil the potatoes in their skins until they can be easily pierced with a fork.
Let them cool a bit and peel them, crushing them with a fork.
We make crumbs pieces of cod, looking for and removing the bones if any, and mix them with the potatoes. We chop the garlic cloves removing the green germ and we also introduce them.
Add the two eggs without beating. We mix well.
Here we can add a little salt, but only a pinch. Although we have desalted the cod it is still quite salty, so be careful.
We separate from the dough balls the size of a ping pong ball. We coat them in wheat flour and fry them in plenty of oil until they are well browned on all sides. We remove and reserve.
In a frying pan with a couple of tablespoons of oil, fry a level tablespoon of flour. When it has fried - it turns brown - we add the peeled and seedless tomatoes, chopped or grated. If you want the sauce to be spicy, add a sliced red chilli.
Add the meatballs to the pan and add a little water so that it covers them halfway and a little more.
Let do 15 minutes and ready to eat. It is a dish that is just as good cold as hot.