FISH OR SHELLFISH PRESERVED IN OLIVE OIL
One of Altamiras’s shortest recipes is “to preserve fish”. In just a couple of lines he describes how to fry and submerge it in olive oil, with only one proviso, that fish should never be floured before frying to help keep clean the fresh preserving oil poured over the top.
A simple enough instruction, it provokes the book’s longest back-story, an account of a quarrel with visiting friary cooks who try to insist on flouring salt-cod before frying it. Altamiras begged to disagree, because if some of the salt-cod was left over then he wanted to preserve it.
Today, we’re used to professionally canned seafood in olive oil as a gourmet product, but we don’t generally preserve fish at home. For the friars it was clearly an everyday practice in the XVIIIth century and probably for shellfish too: Joan Bagués, Franciscan cook at Gerona hospital, wrote up recipes for squid, cuttlefish and lobster in 1775.
However, it’s worth remembering what an olive oil bath can give to simple ingredients. It makes for brilliant, easy, healthy fast-food and it’s also a handy fallback if you have no electricity: steamed mussels or fried fish fillets flavoured with bay leaves or fresh green garlic make a patient salad or grazing food, or even fillings for bocadillos. Remember to bring slowly back to room temperature whatever you preserve this way to get the full flavours.
And like Altamiras you can also recycle your flour-free oil in numerous ways – especially when you have more fish to fry. In Spanish ironmongers you can buy little flip-topped jugs with a filter through which cooks pour their frying oil to keep for another day. If you like you can add a bay leaf to the jug to help keep clean the fresh preserving oíl aromatic.
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❖ Fish or Shellfish Preserved in Olive Oil
A centuries-old way to preserve fish: steam or fry it, dry it well, put it in a non-reactive dish, cover it completely with olive oil (evoo) and leave it in a cool place.
Fried fish preserved in olive oil seems to have been popular 18th-century friary food, and today it’s still worth the effort for its flavours and textures.”