With this Venetian influenced preparation we can EASILY keep the fish at home for up to 10 days.
ingredients for 2 kg of fish (cost about 25 € for the whole preparation)
- 2 kg sardines
- EV sunflower oil for frying (at least 2 liters)
- 400 ml EV olive oil, plus much more for finishing
- 15- 20 sliced garlic cloves
- 250 g dried black currants
- 2-3 sprigs rosemary cut into tufts (or 1-2 bay leaves)
- salt
- 2-3 tbsp black pepper, coarsely chopped
- 250 ml top quality vinegar (I put a mixture of 200 ml of organic white wine vinegar and 50 ml of balsamic vinegar)
- 20 g roasted pine nuts
The Venetian and Ionian cooks recommend the red mullet as the best fish for the preparation, but I do not find any reason to pay so much money for a fish which is going to be covered by many other aromas. Anyway, look how a red mullet savoro looks like.
The sardine has 1/5 of the price of the red mullet, and also needs a little preparation. In addition, due to its size, it is suitable for this food. I suggest you to prepare at least 2 kilos of fish. There is no reason to make savoro every day.
So, after we discard the heads and the intestine of the fishes, we wash them, we dry them well and we fry them in the sunflower oil. The sardines must be well fried but not burnt. We can also grill the sardines if we want to achieve a lighter result.
We let the fish cool very well in a cool environment ( not in the kitchen) for 2 hours, but not longer because they will start to deteriorate. If we have time, we put them in the fridge overnight and continue the preparation the next day.
Then we heat in a large pot the olive oil, the sliced garlic cloves, the currants, the rosemary and the black pepper. After 2-3 minutes, we add the vinegars and the salt, we lower the heat and let the ingredients soften for 15 mins.
We then add the fish very carefully so that they do not dissolve and we continue cooking for 2-3 minutes. We allow the ingredients to cool slightly and we add the pine nuts.
We remove the ingredients with a ladle (being very careful not to dissolve the fish) and we place them in a clay casserole in rows, taking care not to leave very large gaps between them in each row. Between each row, we put a layer of the raisin-pine nuts mixture. We pour the oil and the vinegar on top, logically it will be enough to cover them.
We finish with plenty of very good quality olive oil, we want the oil to be at least a thick finger over the fish, to protect them from spoiling. We put the lid on and we leave in a very cool place.
We wait at least one day and we often check cos the ingredients absorb the liquids. Whenever this happens we add olive oil.
