Home-cooked Chabacano dish: Bacalao

I am happy that mama cooked the Bacalao today. :) It has been a family tradition to cook the Bacalao during Good Friday ever since my lola was still with us. This is practiced as a substitute meal in lieu of meat since meat is not to be consumed during Good Friday.

Bacalao is a traditional Chabacano Lenten dish which is made of salted cod, cooked in tomato sauce; sauteed in garlic, onion and tomatoes in olive oil then seasoned with bay leaf, pepper, and bell peppers. It used to be salted cod but due to its expensive price tag and the scarcity of cod in tropical waters, the salted cod's local substitute is the salted 'labahita' which is I think is the tropical cousin of the codfish. As most of Caviteno families cook this dish, Good Friday is sometimes referred to as the 'Bacalao Festival'. :)

While the dish is being cooked, I talked to mama and ate annie and asked them how it is cooked. Well, the cooking portion looked simple but the cleaning portion is quite tedious and messy.

Before cooking, the salted cod or bacalao is soaked in water overnight to soften and cleanse the meat and dissolve the remaining 'lansa'. Then, the morning after, the bacalao is then taken out of the water and shredded-off from the fish bone.

Ma went to sautee in olive oil a mixture of garlic, onions and chopped tomatoes.

While sauteeing, Ma extracted a dyed water from the anatto(achuete) seeds. This will contribute to the reddish-orage hue of the dish.

The dyed water was then poured over the saute mix and she let it simmer. She said that it should be able to 'magmantika' or most of the water should be evaporated and just leave the dyed olive oil in the pan.

When it's done, she poured the bacalao meat in the pan and started mixing it.

Next came the bell peppers, potatoes and garbanzos.

Just mix it evenly and then it's ready to be served.

Our family opts to add the garbanzo but other households have their own versions using cabbage instead. Other families may have their version a little 'masabaw' while some dish are drier. The Chabacano Bacalao is similar to the Spanish dish Bacalao Vizcaina.This dish is like the adobo, since no two families have the same version of Bacalao.

I know that it's Lent and it's supposed to be a time of sacrifice and abstinence but I can't help to comeback for more serving of this dish since this is one of my favourite dish and it's only cooked during Lent. :)

I really enjoyed it with a cup of steamed rice plus a tall glass of ice-cold sago gulaman. :)

Happy Easter guys!