Friday Cod dreams

My Christmas preparations continue apace. Today, I just have time after the gym and before going to work to use the good old pressure cooker to boil the bacon chubs, along with some spare ribs I found lurking in the freezer, and a collection of potato and carrot peelings, and onion skins, to make some stock.

When I get back from work, I strain the stock and put it in the fridge overnight. I throw out the boiled peelings, and pick up the chubs and spare ribs. Before watching my Friday night DVD ("Saturday Night, Sunday Morning"), I strip the meat from the ribs and shred it slightly, before sticking it in the fridge. I plan to use it to add to the chilaquiles I will make on Christmas morning for my breakfast. True, it would be more usual to use chicken, but I needed to use up the ribs and they were useful for making the stock.

Oh, one last little chore before I watch a young Albert Finney in black and white. I have to put the salt cod in to soak. It's half a fish, sawn into fair-sized chunks at the Portuguese supermarket. I plan to soak it for about 36 hours: the Portuguese would do it for 24 or just 12, but I've been in North America long enough to worry about the impact the salt might have on my blood pressure.

The salt cod smells really wonderful, and when cut has a marvellously marbled appearance. I also love the way they wrap it in crispy, waxed brown paper. The curing really does make a difference, and doubtless explains why the Portuguese insist on this, even though they haven't needed to in all the decades that sea-borne refrigeration has been around. Cod was once so much a staple in Portugal that they can honestly boast of having developed 1,001 ways of making it. There is a book with that many recipes in it, and that may be an under-estimate, as every restaurant I ever visited in the four years I lived there had its very own house recipe.

Of course, there are very real concerns over just how long we will be able to eat the stuff for, with stocks diminishing and scientists insisting on an outright ban on fishing to preserve the species. But I am hooked, and will keep indulging every now and then.