Bermudian Codfish Breakfast

Bermuda is a group of islands which are a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean, about 650 miles from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The territory is self governing on local matters, with foreign policy and military defense provided by the government of the United Kingdom. The British monarch is the head of state. Bermuda has been under English/British rule since the 1600s, but it has had influences from other cultures over time, including from the Portuguese, who brought salt cod (Portuguese: "bacalhau").

When I was a kid until a young adult, the term "Bermuda shorts" was commonly seen or heard for somewhat "dressy" short pants that came to just above the knee, but it's not a term heard much anymore in the United States, or at least not to my knowledge. Likewise, "Bermuda onions" was often heard in reference to sweet onions, but that's another term with scarce usage in the U.S. today. About 20 years ago, a student, a young lady, rented an apartment in a building I managed. When she moved, she gave me a gift (see photo #1, below), which I have kept. I hope she and her family are all well. I believe it was her maternal aunt I met at one point, but the young lady's mother remained back in Bermuda. Very, very nice people! 

This is generally a Sunday breakfast or a breakfast for some special day.

Ingredients (4 servings):

1 1/2 pounds salt cod (or boneless fresh or thawed cod)
12 to 15 small potatoes, washed and halved (or you can cook larger potatoes and then cut them into chunks)
1 tablespoon butter + 1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups diced tomatoes with some juice
2 tablespoons regular ketchup
1/2 cup chopped yellow bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme (or 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 hard boiled eggs, halved lengthwise
1 or 2 avocados
4 bananas 

If you're using salt cod, soak it for about 24 hours, changing the water 4 to 6 times, then cook the cod in a pot with fresh water over medium heat. Maintain a good steady simmer until the cod is tender, about 15 to 25 minutes, depending upon the size of the cod pieces. Drain the cod, let it cool a bit and use two forks to flake the cod and remove any bones. Of course, if you use fresh or thawed cod, you needn't soak it, and you can check for any bones before cooking it. When you cook fresh or thawed cod, add a little salt to the water, something you will not likely have to do if you use salt cod.

(When I made this dish for this article, I fully intended to buy some small potatoes, and cook them with the peels left on, but as this was during the covid pandemic, I had bought a large amount of bigger potatoes to have them on hand, and I thought it best to use those up, so that's what I did. I peeled the larger potatoes before cooking, and almost all of the recipes I read for this dish called for peeling the potatoes.) So, while the fish cooks, in another pot, cover the potatoes with water and bring them to a boil, cooking them until tender (about 20 to 30 minutes). You can boil the eggs separately, but I just let them cook along with the potatoes for about 10 minutes. Now I know there are various recommendations about boiling eggs, like bringing the eggs to a boil for a couple of minutes and then shutting off the heat and letting the eggs sit in the hot water for a certain number of minutes, but I cooked them with the potatoes and I haven't died, although my funeral is set for 2 days hence. hahahaha ... Hey, what the hell am I laughing about?

In a skillet, heat the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion, green pepper, yellow pepper and celery. After about 2 minutes, add the garlic. Continue to saute the vegetables, then add the diced tomatoes. Cook until the vegetables are softened, then add the tomato sauce, ketchup, thyme and black pepper. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking for another 8 to 10 minutes, stirring to mix and to prevent sticking.

To serve: add some flaked cod and some potatoes or potato pieces to each plate. Top both with some of the sauce (in the photos below I used just a little of the sauce, so that the cod and potatoes could be seen), add some slices of avocado and banana to the plate, along with a halved hard boiled egg (which I forgot to add for the pictures, but I must admit, the notice that my funeral is 2 days off did shake me a bit).   

WORD HISTORY:
Scrod-This word is related to "shred," a word from the Germanic roots of English, and it is somewhat more distantly related to "shear," another word from the Germanic roots of English. It goes back to the Indo European root "sker," meaning "to cut," which produced an extended form "skreu," meaning "to cut up, to cut." This gave Old Germanic "skraudanan," meaning "to cut up, to cut off." This gave Old Dutch "scrodan," meaning, "to cut off," which then became "scrode," meaning "to cut off in pieces, to shred," and this produced the noun "schrood" meaning "a piece of something cut off." English borrowed the word around the mid 1800s (as "schrod?") with the meaning, "white fish split or cut into pieces for cooking or salting," perhaps influenced in that meaning by the unrelated fish name "cod" (for quite awhile the meaning was applied to split young/small codfish, but then broadened to simply "whitefish"). Some relatives in the other Germanic languages: German has "Schrot" ("coarse meal or split or crushed meal," thus also, "shot;" that is, "pellet in a shell or cartridge"), German also has "Schrott" ("piece of scrap metal," also, "rubbish" (both in the literal sense and the figurative sense of 'nonsense'), Low German has "Schroot" ("coarsely milled grain"), Dutch "schroot" ("scrap metal"), Frisian had "skred/schred."