Stored provisions (hold supplies, salted and dried for the crossing)
Dried Salt Cod Malouin Style, with Vinegar and Onion
PreservingDocumented🧂 🍄 🍋moyen30 min (plus 24-36 h desalting)
Salt cod, dried, then rehydrated and served shredded with raw onion, vinegar, and a dash of oil. A simple, tangy, iodized preserved dish that traveled in the holds and was rehydrated upon arrival.
Why this dish? Even before Cartier's voyages, Breton and Malouin fishermen already frequented the Newfoundland banks for cod. Salting-drying of cod is the emblematic maritime technique of Saint-Malo, which made possible the long campaigns off Canada.
You see, in Saint-Malo, there is no sailor who does not know cod: we catch it on the great banks, split it, salt it, and dry it in the salt wind until it is hard as a plank. To eat it, you must soak it in several waters, then shred it into fine filaments. With a little raw onion, vinegar, and oil, here is a dish that revives the weary sailor. It is the silver of the sea, my friend: it keeps for a whole year.
Ingredients
- •Salt cod, dried — a nice fillet (central ingredient)
- •Atlantic salt — for preservation (salting)
- •Onion — one (raw bite)
- •Cider vinegar — a dash (acidity)
- •Oil — a drizzle (binder)
How it was made : Two methods coexisted: 'green' cod (salted on board, moist) and 'dry' cod (salted then dried on land on racks, in the wind). Dry cod, lighter, kept for months and fed crews and coastal populations. Saint-Malo made it one of the pillars of its prosperity.