The following recipe, I’m guessing that it will make many people wondered why it is tagged as a greek traditional. The fact is that it has not been promoted as much as any other greek recipe’s but it is one that has been in the Greek table for many years.

Cod with skordalia sauce (garlic sauce) is a dish that is being cooked traditionally in Greece on the 25th of March, as a way to celebrate the day which independence fight against the old Ottoman Empire started in 1821.

The history behind is a bit weird as there are different myths and stories on why that specific dish became so traditional, and how it started to be the typical dish to eat at that day. Also no one knows why the cod needs to be “pastos” meaning “salted” in order to have the dish. Maybe because according to one legend at that time many English were sending salted cod in Greece for exchange to raisins…

Another story is that 25th of March is always happening on the 40 days of fasting before Orthodox easter. Because of the importance to the celebration for religion also , the church is allowing to all the Christians to eat that day only fish. As it wasn’t possible to get  fresh fish on the mountains they were eating salted cod which slowly became as the casual dish at that day.

Nobody really knows!

Either way, what we really care to this is on the recipe and the real secret on this dish lies on the skordalia sauce that Ive talked about it in a different post which you can find over here.

Explaining how to make the haddock will be bad for all the UK readers of this blog as it is well known that it is one of there traditional dishes and they know it i guess by heart 🙂

Cod with Skordalia Recipe (Bakaliaros Skordalia)

Either way here it is

• 300ml of lager beer
• Around 1 and 1/2 cup of self raising flour
• Salt pepper
• Oh yeah and pieces of cod cut in various sizes.

Step 1

In a big bowl put the beer and the flower and stir them until they become properly mixed. Put them to the fridge for 20 minutes. In the meantime put salt and pepper on the cod as much as you want

Step 2

After 20 minutes take the mixture out of the fridge and “dive” the cod pieces inside . In a pan with couple of frying oil that is all ready preheated you add the cod pieces and fry them on both sides until they have that red cover on both sides.

Serve them -necessarily- with the Skordalia recipe in order to have the proper traditional greek cod and garlic sauce recipe.