Cod Croquettes

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2 pounds / 1 kilo salt cod fillets
1 ½ cups chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 large onion finely chopped
1 large egg lightly beaten
¾ to 1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive or vegetable oil for frying

More on cod in Greek cooking:
Greeks eat a lot of cod. Mostly, they do so on two days during Lent, the Anunciation (March 25th) and then again on Palm Sunday. Throughout the year, cod, either in salted or air-dried form, is a taverna staple, too, a classic Greek meze recipe and one of the ouzo mezedes par excellence, served batter-fried into crisp nuggets (our answer to fish sticks) with mercilessly garlicky skordalia, a puree made either with bread or potatoes.

So how did cod come to Greece, in whose waters it doesn’t swim? And why did the Greeks, inured to tangy mullets, sea bass and other maritime treats from the Aegean, embrace it so wholeheartedly?

The quick answer is that the fasting traditions played a role. Note, too, that within the Greek Orthodox fasting traditions one finds countless delicious and easy Mediterranean Diet recipes. On certain days during the long, austere Lenten Fast, during which neither animal products nor fish are allowed, the Church permits one or two dietary transgressions. Fish may be eaten on March 25th then again on Palm Sunday, for example. In coastal regions, fresh fish, not bakaliaro, is still the norm, but throughout the country’s mountainous interior fresh fish was all but impossible to find. So local cooks turned to salt-fish and other cured fish, which was often sold by itinerant merchants.

The cod trade eventually spread eastward from the Atlantic shores of Europe all over the Mediterranean, because the fish provided the same thing it had provided to scores of western European peasants–a cheap, nourishing and, yes, tasty food. The fish that was discovered by the Vikings, commercialized by the Basques and later cornered by the French and English owes much to the latter who are largely responsible for cod’s undisputed place in our own culinary repertoire. If trade records between Britain and Greece are any clue, then the English were doing a brisk business bartering cod, which they had access to thanks to their proximity both to the Atlantic and to the North Sea, in exchange for a commodity Greece could in her turn produce with abundance–raisins.