A large part of Christmas Eve is devoted to food preparation, in particular making those recipes which are traditionally always present

on the festive dinner table. The strong smell of fish emanates from Croatian homes, since in our Mediterranean country this is a very
important religious custom.

On this day, one isn’t allowed to consume meat or heavy foods. It is customary to eat lightly – eating either vegetables or fish. In Croatia,
we traditionally prepare “Bakalar” or cod for Christmas Eve. Despite the fact cod cannot be found in the Adriatic, seafarers have
introduced cod to our country and it is now an important part of our cuisine. There are different ways to prepare Bakalar – either plain;
seafarer’s; Mediterranean or “à la delicatessen”. For this festive season, I am recommending the following traditional Croatian recipe:
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Bakalar

Ingredients (Serves 10)

4 kg smoked cod
300g onion
50g garlic
50g chopped parsley
20ml olive oil
2 bay leaves
Salt & pepper as required

Preparation:

Soak the cod in water for 48 hours. After this, rinse the fish repeatedly in cold water and cook at 100 / 110 °C in sufficient water for approximately 3 hours. Once the cod is cooked, take it out and remove the skin, bones, fins and gut it. You must be left with only the white meat of the fish completely boneless. Cut the onion into slices of approximately ½ cm thickness. Fry the onion in the olive oil until it becomes soft and transparent. Towards the end of frying the onion, add the finely chopped garlic, then remove from the flame and stir in the parsley. Chop the potato into slices of about ½ to 1 cm thickness and in another dish, make a layer of potato, a layer of cod, a layer of the onion, garlic & parsley mix until all ingredients have been used up. After each layer, season with a little salt & pepper. The top must be a layer of potato. Add water so that the top potato layer is covered. Season with a little more salt and add the bay leaves and cook until the potato is ready, which takes approximately 30-40 minutes depending on the thickness of the potato slices. Cod has an extremely strong smell when it is cooked and so it is preferable to cook it in a dish with a lid to cover it. In spite of its strong smell, its great taste will win over any doubting Thomas!

After eating this non-meat festive meal of cod, then comes Christmas Day itself and for this, we can prepare our Roast Turkey & Mlinci dish followed by an abundance of cakes, as published in last December’s CIL newsletter!..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

Mladen has started conducting Croatian cuisine classes in Croatia as part of the Croatian Language School’s immersion courses.
Please see here for more details.
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December’s CIL Newsletter

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