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Bacalao al Pil Pil (Salt Cod in an Oil Sauce Bound by Its Own Gelatin)

Name: Bacalao al Pil Pil (Salt Cod in an Oil Sauce Bound by Its Own Gelatin)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Spanish
Ingredients: 4 pieces thick salt cod loin; 250 ml extra virgin olive oil; 4 cloves garlic; 1 dried chilli (guindilla)

A Basque dish of desalted cod cooked gently in garlic-scented olive oil, after which the pan is swirled until the gelatin the fish gives off binds the oil into a thick yellow sauce. An emulsion made by the wrist, not by boiling.

Ingredients

4servings

thick salt cod loin · about 600g, skin on4 pieces
extra virgin olive oil250 ml
garlic · thinly sliced4 cloves
dried chilli (guindilla) · sliced1

Steps

Soak the cod in cold water in the fridge for 48 hours, changing the water several times. Lift it out and pat it dry.
Put the oil and garlic in a wide clay dish or heavy pan over low heat until the garlic is golden. Add the chilli briefly, then lift out the garlic and chilli and set them aside.
⏲ 5 min
Turn off the heat and let the oil cool until it feels warm when you hold your hand near it.
⏲ 5 min
Lay the cod in skin side down and set it over the lowest heat. It should not sizzle. Give it about 4 minutes, turn, and 4 minutes more. White juices seep out around the fish.
⏲ 8 min
Take the pan off the heat, hold it by the handle and keep swirling it in small circles. The oil and juices turn cloudy, then yellow and thick. You can also lift the cod out for a moment and work the sauce with a sieve.
⏲ 10 min
When the sauce has bound to the thickness of mayonnaise, return the cod, top with the garlic and chilli and serve at once. No salt.

Variations

Kokotxas al pil pil. The same sauce made with cod throats, which carry more gelatin and bind more readily.
With a sieve. Instead of swirling, lift the cod out and work the oil with a metal sieve until it binds, then return the fish.
Clear oil. Cooks who keep to the older way leave the oil clear and do not bind it at all.
Fresh cod. No desalting, but less gelatin, so the sauce binds less readily.

Tips

Desalt over 48 hours. The more often you change the water, the faster it goes.
Fry the garlic first and lift it out. Left in with the cod it burns.
Let the oil cool before the cod goes in. This is not frying.
If it sizzles, it is too hot. The flesh firms before the gelatin comes out.
No added salt. What stays in the cod is enough.
A clay dish helps. It gives up its heat slowly, so the sauce stays warm while you swirl.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

A gelatin emulsion with no boil. Why sauces split notes that when the emulsifier is gelatin the rule inverts and you boil hard, as seolleongtang's milky broth does. Pil pil uses the same emulsifier the other way. In warm oil with almost no water, the gelatin and juices the cod gives off are worked into the oil by the wrist swirling the pan rather than by a boil. That is why the oil must not be hot: the flesh would firm before any gelatin came out.
Is this the real pil pil? Spanish Wikipedia quotes the Marquesa de Parabere (1933) and José María Busca Isusi (1958) arguing that true pil pil keeps its oil clear and that the bound sauce is "bacalao ligado". What is usually called pil pil today is the bound version, as here. Cooks also disagree about skin up or skin down, both sides claiming theirs draws out the gelatin best. The desalting is the same as for bacalhau à brás.