Vianda de día de fiesta (feast-day dish, when the rule relaxes)
Fish Escabeche for Feast Days
FestiveReconstruction🍋 🧂moyen40 min + overnight rest
Fried fish then marinated hot in a broth of vinegar, oil, onions, garlic, and mild spices. Tangy, fragrant, it is eaten warm or cold and keeps for several days.
Why this dish? For a religious, fish is the noble dish on lean days that become feast days. Escabeche, an Iberian technique of preserving in vinegar, allowed serving flavorful fish far from the sea — useful for a man who traveled constantly between convents, ports, and the court of Valladolid.
On feast days, when the rule allows us a little rejoicing, we prepared fish this way. First we fry it in oil, then lay it in a broth of warm vinegar with onions, garlic, bay, and a touch of saffron that gilds it. This secret comes from the Moors of old: vinegar keeps the flesh sound for several days, which serves well one who, like me, is always on the road. Eat it cold the next day: it is only better.
Ingredients
- •Fish (sardines, mackerel, or hake) — according to guests (main element)
- •Wine vinegar — generous (marinade, preservation)
- •Olive oil — abundant (frying and marinade)
- •Onions — several, sliced (mild aromatic)
- •Garlic, bay leaf, saffron — to taste (spices and fragrance)
- •Flour, salt — for coating and seasoning (frying)
How it was made : Escabeche, an Andalusian heritage of Arab-Persian origin (*sikbāj*), was a common 16th-century method in Spain for preserving fish through the acidity of vinegar. Saffron, cultivated in Castile, colored and perfumed festive dishes.