Atascaburras Manchego

Atascaburras is Manchego, with its deepest roots around Albacete: a winter mash of potato, desalted bacalao, garlic, and olive oil, finished with walnuts and hard-boiled egg. What makes it atascaburras is the pounding. The potato and cod become one thick, rough mash with enough body to hold the spoon. There is no tomato, pepper, or sofrito here. Add those and you've walked into another dish.

The method that decides it is simple. Pound the cod into the warm potato, then work in the oil a little at a time, alternating it with spoonfuls of cooking water. The potato starch and the cod's gelatin catch the oil and bind it. Pour everything in at once and the oil sits around the edges while the middle stays heavy. Use a mortar or a bowl and wooden spoon, never a blender, unless glue was your plan for lunch.

Salt cod is worth finding, including the refrigerated kind already desalted. If it isn't sold where you live, use salted pollock, abadejo salado, soaked in the same way. Its flavor is milder and the mash needs a little more cooking water, but the preserving character remains. No hace falta haber pisado España. My notebook's margin says only, "aceite poco a poco," oil little by little. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.