A good tomato preserve has many possibilities beyond making a sauce with it, and this Murcian salad -first cousin of the moje or mojete, although on many occasions they are treated as if they were the same preparation- is a very good example. As in all popular recipes, those that each one prepares at home as he learned from previous generations, there are different versions depending on the source consulted.
From the Murcia City Council they published the traditional Murcian recipe book A walk through the orchardwhere they prepare the mojete with roasted cod -instead of the usual canned tuna or bonito-, fresh tomato and a chopped ñora and round pepper. In turn, the Murcian salad here has tuna in oil and blunt tomatoes: as we have already prepared that version -although with the name of moje, in this case-, today we are going with the cod one. Have we unraveled one of humanity’s recipe mysteries? Not today. Are we going to prepare a tasty dish that is made with the cap? Effectively.
It is important to bear in mind that, as in all simple recipes, the better the raw material – in this case the tomato and the oil take the responsibility – the better the result. Likewise, some tomatoes with excess citric acid as a preservative will result in an unappetizing salad, since in this case we do not have the possibility of adjusting that acidity with sugar or bicarbonate as when we prepare them in a sauce. Around here we like the ones from Rosara preserves, The Cathedral of Navarre, Can Valls Y Petra Morawhich I just found out you have a version in olive oilY The Navarrico.
The black olives that they recommend using are the cuquillo murcianas -which are purple rather than black, small in size, flesh is brown but not dry, and a thyme-based dressing-, but if you don’t have some of the empeltre variety on hand, or any other black olive that you like, it will work perfectly.
It may seem that it has a lot of onion in proportion to the rest of the ingredients, but if the onion is tender and sweet, it works very well. If the one you have is hard and while you were cutting it, it made you cry more than The fireflies’s grave, leave it to soak for half an hour in a little salted water and a good splash of vinegar (if it’s very hot, put it in the fridge). You can always put less on it, of course, especially if it makes you feel bad, because we haven’t come here to suffer either.
Regarding the cutting and cooking of cod, I have also seen from those who use a whole loin and then crumble it to those who choose to buy the crumbs directly -which are always cheaper-; and there are those who cook it in the oven, who boil it and who grill it. I keep the crumbs and a few quick turns in the pan because I don’t see much point in buying a large piece -and expensive- to make crumbs later, and because browning gives much more flavor than boiling (turning on the oven just to put a bit of cod right now I don’t even think about it, really).
If you have spent the money on a good tomato preserve, do not throw away the liquid from the preserve: you can cool it and drink it seasoned with a little lemon or vinegar and a touch of pepper, add a few cubes of cucumber, tomato and green onion and eat it as a light soup or cook it until half evaporated, freeze it in cubes and use it to flavor stews and casseroles.
Difficulty
It’s a canned tomato salad, for Dior’s sake.
Ingredients
- 2 cans -800 g drained weight- of pear tomato
- 1 large onion or two small
- 200 g desalted cod crumbs
- 4 eggs
- A handful of black olives
- extra virgin olive oil
- Vinegar to taste (optional)
- Salt
- freshly ground black pepper (optional)
Preparation
- Cook the eggs nine minutes from boiling water. Cut the cooking with abundant very cold water or ice and, when they are cold, peel them.
- Cook the desalted cod in a frying pan with a little oil for two or three minutes over a light heat, remove from the heat and transfer to another container as soon as it turns coloured. Let cool.
- Remove the tomatoes and drain them well (reserve the liquid). Chop to taste and put in a bowl with two of the chopped hard-boiled eggs, half the olives, almost all the cod -reserve a little to decorate- a generous jet of oil and, if you like, vinegar and pepper.
- Stir well and leave to rest for a couple of hours in the fridge so that the flavors mix and take some freshness (it can be from one day to the next). Taste and, if necessary, adjust salt. Garnish with the rest of the eggs cut into segments, the olives and the reserved cod and serve with a good bread for dipping.
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