Bacalhau Recipe - Great British Chefs

These tasty little fish bites are made from bacalhau - dried, salted cod originating from Portugal, but you can use smoked haddock if you can't get hold of this speciality. Marcello Tully uses up salmon trimmings in his fish bites, but other fish trimmings will do nicely. This bacalhau recipe comes served with a fresh sweet chilli dip, making the perfect finger-food for a party.

Ingredients

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Bacalhau bites

200g of salt cod fillet, soaked overnight then gently poached for 5 minutes
600g of fish trimmings
2 eggs
3g of Tabasco
15g of caster sugar
5g of salt
18g of white wine vinegar
60g of cornflour
1/2 red pepper
1/2 fennel
1/2 onion
2g of chilli, fresh
10g of fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves
250g of spinach

Sweet chilli dip

2 red chillies
1 garlic clove
2 tsp fresh ginger
170g of white wine vinegar
50ml of water
350g of caster sugar
25g of fish sauce
2 pinches of salt
2 pinches of cornflour, mixed with a little cold water to dilute

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Deep fat fryer
Blender

Add the fish trimmings to a blender and blitz. Add the eggs, mix until just combined then add the Tabasco, sugar, salt, vinegar and cornflour. Mix again until smooth

2 eggs
600g of fish trimmings, preferably salmon
3g of Tabasco
15g of caster sugar
5g of salt
18g of white wine vinegar
60g of cornflour

Scrape out into a mixing bowl and clean the blender. Add the pepper, fennel and onion to the clean blender and blitz into a pulpy liquid. Chop the chillies, ginger and garlic, then add to the jug and blitz again. Transfer the mix to a bowl and set aside

1/2 red pepper
1/2 fennel
1/2 onion
2g of chilli, fresh
10g of fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves

Blanch 125g of the spinach by placing in a bowl and covering in boiling water for 30 seconds. Strain and set aside ice cold water to cool. Once completely cool, strain again and squeeze out as much liquid from the spinach as possible

125g of spinach

Roughly chop the cooked spinach along with the remaining 125g of raw spinach and add to the mix, along with the flaked salt cod or smoked haddock

200g of salt cod fillet, soaked overnight then gently poached for 5 minutes
125g of spinach

For the sweet chilli sauce, remove the seeds and stalks from each chilli and chop finely. Finely chop the garlic and ginger, then add all of the ingredients to a saucepan (apart from the diluted cornflour) and bring to the boil

2 red chillies
1 garlic clove
2 tsp fresh ginger
170g of white wine vinegar
50ml of water
350g of caster sugar
25g of fish sauce
2 pinches of salt

Once boiling, whisk in the cornflour solution and boil for a further 1-2 minutes, then set aside to cool

2 pinches of cornflour, mixed with a little cold water to dilute

Meanwhile, cook the bacalhau bites. Shape the mix into walnut-sized pieces and deep-fry in hot oil at 180°C for 2-3 minutes until golden. Set aside to drain and cool a little, then serve with the sweet chilli dip

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Marcello Tully

When Brazilian-born chef Marcello Tully started his career at fourteen, he may not have anticipated working on the starkly beautiful island of Skye – but then he probably didn’t expect to be crafting some of the most exquisitely refined Scottish-influenced food on the planet, either.

Bacalhau (salt cod) bites

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