No fish had a greater impact on western civilization than cod. The enormous schools of cod in the northern Atlantic Ocean were the subject of many political maneuverings, enough that a few books to have been written on the subject. (I'd recommend Mark Kurlansky's Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.) Codfish figure into the diets of people who never see the fish in its fresh state--only in its salted, dried form. That's bacalao or bacala, which is to fresh fish what beef jerky is to a strip sirloin steak. Codfish cakes somehow became popular in Louisiana. I get many calls from people looking for the canned codfish their grandparents made into codfish cakes during Lent. But codfish, despite its enormous former numbers, are just about fished out of the ocean. Fresh codfish still can be found in New England, but it rarely reaches here except in the bacala form. I do not miss it. If you want to make Grandma's codfish cakes, use the same recipe but with crabmeat instead. You'll thank me later. This is the third in a series of 32 reports on the fish we eat around New Orleans, our annual Lenten survey. This year's theme is exotic fish: the ones that come from far away, and the local species that we don't encounter very often.
