Pericana recipe: dried peppers and salt cod

Pericana is one of those recipes solved with fire, a good hand and three ingredients. There is no pot and no sofrito: you roast, flake and dress. That is why what goes in the bowl, and how each thing is treated, matters so much. We follow El Español’s recipe for two people.

Roasting well: the pepper, the salt cod and the garlic

All three ingredients go through the heat before they are combined. The dried pepper is roasted over embers or fried for a moment in very hot oil, until it puffs up. The salt cod goes on the griddle or over the flame until it sweats, and the garlic is toasted. No source gives times for each step, so go by eye: pepper puffed without burning, salt cod with a toasted surface, garlic golden on the outside.

If you have no embers, Turisme Dival allows frying the peppers, roasting them in the oven or passing them over a gas flame; the traditional way is over embers, directly on the fire. The garlic is peeled after toasting and sliced thinly.

Flaking by hand

Once cooled a little, the peppers are cut by hand, seedless, into medium pieces. The salt cod is flaked with the fingers and the bones are removed. It is the same gesture that gives the esgarraet its name, with one clear difference: here the pepper is dried and has been roasted or fried, while there it is fresh and roasted in the oven. Anyone looking for the roasted pepper salad will find it in that other recipe.

The paprika and the oil are added at the end, when everything is in the bowl, and mixed well. A splash of very hot water, optional, softens the mixture.

The salt cod and its salt

El Español doesn’t mention soaking the salt cod. Turisme Dival says the salt cod can be salted or already soaked, and that you should adjust the salt according to which you use. If yours is salted, soak it first (as in the borreta from Alcoy) and taste for salt at the end.

Two ways to make it

In Bocairent, Turisme Dival records another way: the ingredients are boiled for about 15 minutes and it is eaten hot. Dival adds that if the boiling is skipped and the shredded ingredients are presented with oil, the result recalls esgarraet. In the Serra de Mariola, dried peppers, garlic, dried abadejo and lemon peel are macerated in raw oil.

Dival describes the Mariola one as an inland dish with a strong flavour, usually eaten as a starter or for supper. In every version, the ingredients are few and from the larder.

On the plate, Dival drizzles the hot version with the olive oil you have chosen, and asks for a good one, because it adds flavour and personality and is not just a dressing. It also suggests another way to eat it: spread on slices of bread, like pan con tomate. El Español adds that the ingredients were carried dry and mixed with olive oil at the moment of eating, and calls it an essential starter on the Christmas Eve menu in many homes.

When to put it on the table

El Español describes it as a starter that appears on the Christmas Eve menu in many homes in the province of Alicante, and adds that it is also good for a lunch or supper after a long day, not only at Christmas.

Everyday mistakes

• Leaving the salt cod raw or without sweating. The source roasts it until it sweats.
• Chopping in a hurry. The peppers are torn by hand into medium pieces, seedless.
• Over-salting. Taste at the end, with the salt cod already mixed in.

If there are lots of you at the table

As a starter, pericana is prepared in advance. If there are lots of you, we cook for groups at company Christmas lunches, and for other dishes from the Alicante tradition you have the rellenos of Elda.