The Cure · Starter
Boquerones en Vinagre
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 500 g fresh anchovies, held at -20C (-4F) for 48 hours first
- 250 ml white wine vinegar
- 100 ml cold water
- 10 g fine sea salt
- 3 garlic cloves, sliced paper thin
- 15 g flat parsley, chopped
- 200 ml mild olive oil
The skills inside
Filleting fishBrining & curing
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
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Method
- Pinch off each head and pull it downward to draw the guts with it, open the fish along the belly, and lift the backbone out from the head end, leaving the fillets joined at the tail.
- Rinse the fillets in cold water, changing it until the water stays clear, because leftover blood turns the finished fish grey.
- Lay them skin down in a shallow dish, pour over the vinegar, water and salt, and refrigerate 4 hours for small fish, 6 for fat ones. 240 min
- Cut one fillet across to check: the moment no translucent line is left at the centre, drain the lot.
- Layer in a container with the garlic and parsley, cover completely with the oil, and leave a day before eating. Use within five days.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Fino or Manzanilla Sherry
- Also Right
- Muscadet or dry Riesling
- From the Taps
- Pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
Salt-cured fish wants a bone-dry, saline partner: Sherry and Atlantic whites answer the cure without fighting it.
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