Bacalhau

Roasted sweetness is the only sugar allowed near this much salt.

Starch takes on salt and gelatin at once, which nothing else does.

Beaten in cold, the fish’s gelatin turns it into mayonnaise, eggless.

Enough salt to bury raw garlic, so it can go in raw and hard.

Salted flakes and raw garlic fat. The Provencal plate needs nothing else.

Soak then poach: milk pulls salt out and puts fat back.

Scrambled egg is the binder a dried fish cannot supply.

Salt beside salt. The olive brings the bitterness the fish lost.

Acid rehydrates flavour the salt flattened out.

Two dried things brought back by water, on the same Lenten plate.

Salted fish protein and sweet starch: the Caribbean version of chips and gravy.

Fat blunts salt faster than water dilutes it.

Whipped cod is mostly texture. Bread gives it something to break against.

Whipped salt fish on grilled yellow slabs. Venice has not moved on.

Salt on salt only works because there is no residual sugar anywhere.

Salt sits still, chilli moves, and the fish becomes breakfast.

Granada's remojón: sweet orange over salt fish, onion under it. No sugar needed.

Two preservations meeting: sun-dried fruit against salt-dried fish.

Basque logic: hard acid strips the salt, and the tannin gives the fish grip.

Salted-caramel logic on a fish. Cocoa butter takes the salt.