The classic recipe of the bacalà Vicentina, which was found and validated in many studies meetings of the Brotherhood of Bacalà, which has its corporate headquarters in Sandrigo, is certainly unique. But in the fantasy that the art of gastronomy develops, the variations are endless. There are those who binds the pieces of development in rolls, those who deny the abundance of anchovy and onion obtaining a more delicate dish but less tasty, who abounds in milk lightening the appearance of the dish, who mince the garlic and who pulls out the whole half-cooked, who considers it essential to four or even five hours of slow cooking, who only three, who passes the slices of cod in the flour and who is not .. On one point they all agree: the cooking oil must be of the best quality, abundant, and bacalà should never be stir up. Only then these variations on the theme of bacalà Vicentina give amazing results and will also give cause for long, good-natured and learned discussions that will range certainly also on the difficult issue of the combination of the dish with wine, matching extremely subjective and changeable. The “Venerable Brotherhood of bacalà Vicentina” suggests a recipe that is the result of studies and comparisons between the many recipes in vogue in the most famous restaurants and taverns’s in Vicenza neighbourhoods between thirty and fifty years without demonizing variants currently in service.

Ingredients for 12 people:

1 kg of dried stockfish
gr. 250-300 Onion
1/2 liter of extra virgin olive oil
3 salted sardines
½ liter of fresh milk
a little white flour
grams.50 of grated Parmesan cheese
a sprig of parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

Preparation

Soak the dried cod, already well beaten, in cold water, changing every 4 hours for 2-3 days.
Open the fish lengthwise, remove the bone and all the plugs. Cut into pieces.
Finely chop the onions; fry in a pan with a cup of oil, add the salted sardines, cut into small pieces; the last to fire off, add the chopped parsley.
Flour the pieces of cod, sprayed with the fried mixture, then arrange them side by side, in a terracotta pan or aluminum or in a baking dish (the bottom of which you will be ‘paid, first, a few spoonfuls of fried); cover the fish with the rest of the mixture, add the milk, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper.
Combine the oil to cover all the pieces, leveling them.
Cook over very low heat for about 4 and a half hours, occasionally moving the container in a circular motion, without stirring.
This firing process in Vicenza is called “pipare.”
Only experience will define the exact cooking of dried cod, from specimen to specimen, may differ in consistency.
The bacalà Vicentina is great even after a rest period of 12-24 hours. Serve with polenta.

(by the Venerable Brotherhood of Bacalà alla Vicentina)