Recommendations · Wine and food
Bacalhau à Brás with Quinta de Chocapalha Arinto
The Portuguese dish of salted cod, thin potato strips and egg, with olives and parsley on top. Arinto is the Portuguese white grape that holds on to its acidity, and that is exactly what is needed here.
From the shelf
The bottle
Quinta de Chocapalha Arinto comes from Portugal and is made from arinto. The wine is 12.5% ABV and the bottle holds 70 centilitres. Arinto is known in Portugal as a grape that keeps its acidity even in warm regions; this wine is dry and has not been aged in wood.
The combination
Why this works together
Bacalhau à Brás is a salty dish: the cod is preserved in salt and that salt remains noticeable even after soaking. At the same time it is rich with olive oil and eggs. Salt and fat both call for acidity, and arinto has enough of it to lift the dish rather than disappear beneath it. It matters that this wine has not seen any wood: an oak-aged white wine would, with its vanilla note, lie over the salted fish. And red is out, because tannin and salted fish together produce a metallic taste.
At the table
The dish
- Before 4 people
- Ready in 40 minutes, plus 24 hours soaking
- Type main course
What you need
- 500 grams of salted cod
- 800 grams of waxy potatoes
- 8 eggs
- 2 onions
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 100 grams of black olives
- 6 tablespoons olive oil
- 500 milliliters of sunflower oil for frying
- 1 bay leaf
- 25 grams flat-leaf parsley
- freshly ground black pepper
How to make it
- Soak the salted cod for a full day in plenty of cold water in the fridge and change the water three times. Without that soaking the dish is inedible.
- Put the fish on with the bay leaf in cold water, bring it to the boil and let it steep for ten minutes with the heat off. Let it cool, remove the skin and bones and flake the meat.
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into strips of half a centimetre, as thin as matchsticks. Rinse them and pat them very dry.
- Heat the sunflower oil to 170 degrees and fry the potato sticks in batches for five minutes until golden brown. Let them drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle lightly with pepper.
- Cut the onions into thin half rings and chop the garlic finely. Sweat them in the olive oil in a wide pan for ten minutes until soft and sweet.
- Stir in the fish flakes and let them warm through for two minutes.
- Beat the eggs loose with pepper. Turn the heat low, fold the potato strips through the pan and pour the eggs over.
- Now stir gently until the egg has just set and take it off the heat immediately. The whole should stay creamy and not dry out like scrambled egg. Scatter the parsley and olives over it.
In the glass
Serving
Serve the wine at 9 to 11 degrees in a white wine glass. This wine does not need to breathe. Between glasses, put the bottle back in the cooler, because in a warm kitchen it warms up quickly.
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