Tinker mackerel is a very cheap fish in Greece, abundant during summer and fall
ingredienti per 4 porzioni (costo circa 3 € ap)
- 4 large tinker mackerels (about 200 g each)
- Sale
- Olio di semi di girasole EV
- 500 g potatoes for purée
- 100 g sweet potatoes
- 200 ml di brodo vegetale
- 4 big figs
- some capers
- some peanuts
- balck pepper
- fresh rosemary leaves
There is a proverb in Greece “every thing at its time and the tinker mackerel in August”. This fish becomes bigger and fatter during August, September and October, so this is the best time to taste it. But this dish can be done with common mackerels (more expensive) or any other oily fish.
I sometimes think how important is fish in my cuisine. Every time I am in front of a fish I can imagine thousands of ways to cook it (I don´t have the same inspiration with meat). Today, I decided to prepare this fat fish with a purée (I have added a small proportion of sweet potatoes in order to give more colour), some figs (to balance fish fats), capers (fish´s …… girlfriend) and peanuts to produce a more interesting texture. Trying to enhance the fishiness I didn´t used neither olive oil, nor butter for the purée, substituting them with a neutral, organic EV sunflower oil.
First of all we put the capers in plenty of water to reduce their saltiness and also the bad odour of their liquid. We leave them in the water for at least one hour.
We then prepare the purée. Normally, when I prepare purée with sweet potatoes I roast them instead of boil them, but at today´s preparation the amount of the sweet potato is very small as all that we want is some colour. So we peel potatoes and sweet potato, we cut them in pieces and we boil them together till very tender. We mush them with the special utensil, we add some oil, some stock and at the end salt and pepper. We check the saltiness, before setting the purée aside. We keep the purée warm.
We clean the fishes and we make them filets, removing the head, the central bone and the spines. It is not easy, tinker mackerel has plenty of them. We salt the mackerels.
In a large pan we fry the mackerels for 2 minutes in high heat (skin side down), we remove from fire, we put the lid and we let it for 2-3 more minutes or till the upper side will have been cooked.
We peel and cut the figs with the hand in uneven pieces.
We put some purée in a plate and we add fish, figs, capers and peanuts. We drizzle more oil, we garnish with rosemary leaves and we serve.
