Escabeche is old Portuguese market-day cooking: small fish, usually carapau, fried hard and fast, then drowned in a hot vinegar and onion sauce and left to sit until the next day before anyone touches it.
That waiting was the hardest part of being a kid in that kitchen. Escabeche is an old preservation trick dressed up as a delicacy: fry the fish, pour a hot vinegar-onion-carrot sauce over it while everything is still warm, and let the acid do slow, quiet work overnight.
It is a completely different animal from grilled sardines (our sardinhas assadas recipe covers the summer cookout version), because escabeche wants fried fish, not charred, and it wants to sit and mellow rather than come straight off the fire. The sauce itself is the star and it works on more than fish: fried vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, even leftover roast chicken all take well to a good escabeche bath.
A double batch is worth making whenever you have carapau or mackerel on hand, because the sauce keeps in the fridge far longer than the fish will.
Molho de Escabeche Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 large yellow onions, thinly sliced
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 2 carrots, thinly sliced into rounds
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
- 3/4 cup white wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- Salt, to taste
- 2 lbs freshly fried fish (carapau, mackerel, sardines or smelts), for serving
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat and add the onion, garlic and carrot. Cook gently, stirring often, until soft and just turning golden at the edges, about 8 minutes; you do not want deep browning here.
- Add the bay leaves, paprika and peppercorns and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant.
- Pour in the vinegar and wine, add a good pinch of salt, and bring to a simmer. Let it bubble gently for 5 minutes so the vinegar loses some of its sharp edge.
- Fry your fish separately until golden and cooked through, then arrange in a single layer in a glass or ceramic dish.
- Pour the hot escabeche sauce evenly over the warm fish, making sure the onions and carrots settle over the top.
- Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours, ideally overnight, before serving cold or at room temperature.
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