Fried Small Fish

Small whole fish floured and nothing else, fried in small batches so the pan never cools, and eaten whole.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 800 g small whole fish: picarel, smelt, anchovy or whitebait
• 200 g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 500 ml olive oil or a mix of olive and sunflower
• 2 lemons, in wedges
• black pepper

Method

1. FLOUR AND NOTHING ELSE. No batter, no egg, no breadcrumb. The whole point of a fish this size is that the skin crisps directly against the oil, and any coating thicker than a dusting of flour turns it into a fritter with a fish inside. They are also eaten whole -- head, bones and all, on anything up to about 10 cm -- which a batter would make unpleasant.
2. SMALL BATCHES AND A HOT PAN, and this is the only difficulty. Twenty fish into the pan at once drops the oil temperature by forty degrees and they stew in it: they come out pale, soft and greasy, and no amount of further frying recovers them. Eight at a time, and the oil allowed back up to temperature between batches.
3. THEY ARE FLOURED AT THE LAST SECOND. Floured in advance and left standing, the coating goes damp and slides off in the oil, taking the skin with it.
4. Fish rinsed and drained well. Not gutted if they are under about 10 cm; gutted and the heads left on if larger.
5. Spread on a cloth and patted thoroughly dry. Wet fish spits violently and does not crisp.
6. Flour and salt mixed in a wide bowl or a bag.
7. Oil to 180C in a deep frying pan -- about 2 cm depth is enough; these are shallow-fried rather than submerged.
8. A handful of fish tossed in the flour, lifted out and SHAKEN HARD in a sieve so the loose flour falls away. Loose flour in the oil burns and turns the later batches bitter.
9. Straight into the pan, eight at a time, spread out so they are not touching.
10. 2 minutes, until the underside is gold and they release from the pan on their own. Turned once with a spider, 1 to 2 minutes more.
11. Lifted onto a rack, NOT paper, and salted at once while the surface is still oily enough to hold it.
12. The oil brought back up to temperature before the next batch.
13. Served immediately with lemon, pepper, and skordalia or tzatziki as on their own pages.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes