Bacalao and the Salad

Hna. Saldivar is a master teacher.  She offered to teach us how to make "bacalao" which meant we were invited to her home to make it with her.  We arrived at 10 a.m. on the day of Christmas Eve and they had already begun one batch of "bacalao" but that was only the first of three batches so we helped in the entire process in one way or another.  Bacaloa is codfish and we had seen it in the store as great salted slabs 1 ft x 3 ft by 1 inch but we didn't take a photo at the time.

So bacalao is the name of the fish and also the name of the salad.  The process for bacalao [salad] begins 4 days ahead of time when the salted fish is put in fresh water and the water dumped off twice a day to remove the salt.  The day of preparation, she took handfuls of the bacalao and squeezed the extra water from it and then we pulled it into little pieces.  This was cooked slowly until golden and then they added olive oil, freshly ground garlic, chopped onions, and diced tomatoes and cooked that for quite some time until the moisture had been absorbed.  Also added during the process were capers and almonds. It is a cooked salad but is not served when hot--we aren't sure if it is cooled in the fridge or not.  We are to receive the recipe some time but for now that's good enough.

Hna. Saldivar said she had bought 4 kilos of bacalao for her family dinner.  We went back for photos and the big slabs were no longer in the store but they had cut and wrapped the fish into smaller packages.

The price is 195.90 pesos per kilo or $13.23 a kilo or $6 per pound.   As you can see, the package pictured here is 2.1 kilos [4.6 lbs.] and costs 413.35 pesos or $27.97.