The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Jamaican · Main

Escovitch Fish

  • Intermediate
  • 40 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

bright · fiery Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, real fire that builds and stays.

Ingredients

  • 2 whole red snapper, about 500 g each, scaled and gutted
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cracked black pepper
  • 500 ml coconut oil or vegetable oil, for frying
  • 200 ml cane vinegar
  • 1 large onion, 150 g, sliced into rings
  • 1 carrot, 100 g, cut into matchsticks
  • 150 g cho-cho (chayote), peeled and cut into matchsticks
  • 1 scotch bonnet, sliced into rings
  • 8 g pimento berries
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp salt, for the pickle
  • 4 sprigs thyme

The skills inside

Deep fryingKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias

Allergen screen

Found: fish

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Score each fish to the bone three times a side, rub salt and pepper inside and out, then leave 15 minutes and pat the skin back to a matte, bone dry finish. 15 min
  2. Heat the oil to 180C (355F) and fry the fish 5 to 6 minutes a side, until the skin is deep gold and the dorsal fin pulls out clean. Drain on a wire rack, never on paper. 6 min
  3. Boil the vinegar with pimento, sugar, salt and thyme for 2 minutes, until the raw vinegar smell softens into something rounder. 2 min
  4. Drop in onion, carrot, cho-cho and scotch bonnet and count 90 seconds: they should lose their raw squeak and still snap.
  5. Pour the pickle boiling hot over the hot fish, cover loosely and leave to sit.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Deep frying 96 recipes

  • The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
  • Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
  • The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
  • A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
  • Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.

Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.

Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes

  • Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
  • The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
  • The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
  • Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
  • They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.

Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Escovitch Fish The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Jamaican kitchen