CROSTINI DI POLENTA FRITTA CON BACCALA’ or BACCALA’ ON CROSTINI OF FRIED POLENTA

Today I am fulfilling a request from Helen of Beyond Salmon who some time ago asked me for a recipe of Baccalà on crostini of fried polenta. (Baccalà is dried and salted cod) It has taken me some time but I didn’t find ‘de-salted’ baccalà fillets until last week. Of course I could have bought the normal, salted baccalà but I just didn’t feel like doing the “12 hour under running water” thing that one has to do! But here it is. I hade made the polenta two days before so I kept the left-over slab in the fridge because it needs some time to settle and become compact, otherwise it easily falls apart when you slice it.



CROSTINI DI POLENTA FRITTA CON BACCALA’ or BACCALA’ ON CROSTINI OF FRIED POLENTA

1 baccalà fillet, not too big
3 quite big, ripe tomatoes
1 dried peperoncino
1 clove of garlic
1 tblsp chopped parsley
salt
extra-virgin olive oil


- Chop the tomatoes and throw them into large frying pan where you have warmed some olive oil with the garlic cut into two or three pieces , the crumbled peperoncino and the parsley. Simmer slowly until the tomatoes are mushy.
- While it is simmering you take off the skin of the baccalà fillet, cut it into pieces, and add it to the tomato sauce when it has reached the right stage of mushiness.
- Let it cook on medium heat until the baccalà is ready and you can divide it into quite small pieces with fork or something like that.
- Put this aside for a while.
- Cut ½ cm/0,2 in thick slices of the polenta and fry these in quite a lot of olive oil. When they are crispy on the outside, it takes approx. 4-5 minutes, you let them drip off the excess oil on some kitchen towel paper.
- When you have finished frying, you warm up the baccalà and put some of it on each crostino.