Yup I'm back to blogging :>

I've been cooking more often lately in an effort to not eat out so much, both for health and money reasons. Consequently I've been experimenting. When I cook, I experiment. Part of this involves picking up random things at the supermarket, or the various odd little mexican/asian/hippy-food groceries I like to wander thru on occasion. On this occasion, the oddity of the week was some baccalà. Baccalà is salt-cod, dried, salted codfish. It keeps well, as it will last basically forever as long as you keep it cool and dry. To use it you soak it in a bowl of water overnight in the refridgerator, changing the water 2-3 times.

Here's the results of my experimenting.

Beer braised Baccalà:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb baccalà/salt-cod (I used christobol brand), soaked (see above)
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 med onion, finely chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thin sliced
• olive oil
• 2 tbsp butter
• 4-5 tbsp tomato, spinach and cheese pasta sauce [1]
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup beer (preferrably a good wheat beer, like a dark wheat bock. I used Sam Adams dark wheat bock/winter brew)

Note: [1] Use good pasta sauce, or make your own, it's just crushed tomatoes, spinach, provolone, parmesan, garlic and/or oregeno

Directions:

• Bring 6 cups of water to a boil, an boil the fish for 15 min. Drain, and break into bite-sized pieces. Put aside.
• in a sauté pan, melt 2 tbsp butter, and add olive oil.
• sauté onions til tender and translucent , then add bell pepper. Let cook for 2-3 min covered.
• Add chicken stock, and pasta sauce to onions and peppers, stir
• Add in the baccalà, and the beer. Stir to coat the fish. You want enough liquid to braise the fish in, but not enough to cover it.
• Cover pan, simmer on low heat for 1 hr. Check periodically to make sure sauce does not dry out. If it looks low, add a little hot water, or more beer, if you like.
• Done! Serve as is, or over rice or vermicelli noodles.

Serves 2 - 4.

Seafood + Beer. It don't get better than that.