Stockfish
Also called: stokfisch, okporoko, dried cod, stock fish, poisson séché norvégien
Stockfish is white fish, mostly cod, dried in the open air without salt until it is hard as wood. It is not the same thing as salt cod: stockfish has no salt. Once soaked and cooked it turns firm and fibrous again, with a strong fish flavour and a smell that carries through the whole sauce.
In Cameroon it gives body to leaf-based sauces. Lumo has two recipes that use it: eru and afang soup, both from the South-West. The easiest way is to buy it ready cut, because a whole dried fish can only be cut with a saw. Soak the pieces in cold water for several hours, or overnight for thick ones, changing the water. Then boil them until tender, pick out the bones and flake the flesh before adding it. Dry, stockfish keeps a long time in a tightly closed bag somewhere dry. Once soaked, keep it in the fridge and use it within a day or two.
African grocery shops in Europe and North America sell stockfish pieces, heads and tails, often under the Nigerian name okporoko. Salt cod, well soaked to remove the salt, can stand in for it. The texture is softer and the taste milder, but the sauce keeps a dried-fish character.
Recipes with this ingredient
- Afang Soup Sud-Ouest · 1 hr 30 min
A rich Calabar-style soup: pounded afang (okazi) leaves and waterleaf cooked with goat meat, dried fish, periwinkle and palm oil.
- Eru Sud-Ouest · 1 hr
A South-West classic: finely shredded eru (okazi) and waterleaf greens stewed with beef, cow skin, smoked fish and crayfish in plenty of red palm oil.