One recipe, one tradition

The Original Recipe

Name: Baccalà Mantecato, the original recipe
Cook time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Venetian
Ingredients: 300 g stockfish (baccalà), already soaked and boned (flesh and skin); 0.3 L oil (3/4 sunflower oil, 1/4 mildly flavoured extra virgin olive oil); bay leaves; lemon; salt; pepper

Baccalà mantecato (Venice's whipped stockfish cream) as tradition demands. Not a variant, not a shortcut: the recipe the Confraternita guards and defends.

Baccalà mantecato served with three slices of grilled polenta, on a dark plate resting on a mooring post in the Venetian lagoon

Preparation

Place the stockfish in a pot, cover it with lightly salted cold water and bring to the boil. Cook for about 20 minutes with half a lemon and two bay leaves.
Now "mantecare" the flesh and skin: whip them vigorously by hand with a wooden spoon, or in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle. Avoid the blender if at all possible; if you must, use the plastic blade.
Pour in the oil in a thin stream and let the mixture whip up as if it were a mayonnaise, until you have a firm, even cream.
If it turns too glossy, add a teaspoon of the cooking water, then continue with the oil.
Finish creaming, leaving a few pieces of fish whole.

How to serve it

Chopped parsley. Serve with fresh or grilled polenta, ideally from Marano corn or the Venetian "bianco perla" variety.

The video in which chef Franco Favaretto, patron of the BaccalàDivino restaurant and the Confraternita's Savio di Bocca, its "Sage of the Palate", shows how to whip a perfect mantecato is coming soon to this page.