A very tasty and interesting way to cook and preserve fresh fish!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 4€ pp)
- 1 kg sardines
- Plenty first quality extra virgin sunflower oil for frying
- 8 garlic cloves NOT peeled
- 200 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 100 ml first quality white vinegar
- Some aromatic vegetables as carrots, onions or spring onions, fennel etc.
- Some fresh herbs (bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, rosemary etc.)
- Best quality smoked paprika, such as Spanish De la Vera
- Salt
The escabeche is a technique which helps us cook and preserve fish, seafood or meat for up to 10 days, off the fridge, just in a cool temperature.
There are many types of escabeche and also many ways to cook it. Let´s stay at this recipe for the moment.
First of all we have to fry the fish. So, we wash and we remove heads and intestines. We pat dry and keep the rest.
We preheat the sunflower oil to 180o – 190oC and we fry the fish, but not too much, keeping in mind that they continue to be cooked in the escabeche.
We also precook the vegetables and the garlic cloves till tender.
In another skillet we put together the olive oil and vinegar and we bring to boil. We salt the liquid, we boil for 1-2 minutes and check if salting is good. When ready, we add the sardines, the vegetables, the garlic cloves, the paprika and the herbs, we lower the temperature and we let it be cooked for 2 minutes.
We let all things cool in the liquid, where we conserve the fish during the whole period, within they can be consumed.
We plate and we cover the fish with the escabeche sauce.
Sometimes instead of sardines I prepare flying squids this way. The procedure is a little bit different, so we have to simmer the molluscs for about 45 min (or even more) till they are completely tender. We then advance to the next stage, which means cooking the flying squids in the escabeche sauce along with the other ingredients.
