If Christmas is getting complicated for you and you are wondering what baked fish to make this holiday season and you don’t want to leave your card looking for sea bream or viceroy, we have a perfect alternative to enjoy an almost unknown fish which, however, is perfect for baking.
With a fatty profile similar to sea bream, of more or less considerable sizes (it is easy to find them over two kilos) and with white, tight and firm meat, the alternative that we propose is, in addition, Chef Ángel León’s favorite fishthree Michelin stars at the Aponiente restaurant (El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz).
It is precisely León, nicknamed El Chef del Mar, who makes apology for cheaper fish and that sometimes go unnoticed in fishmongersalthough in this case our protagonist is quite frequent in the cuisine of Cádiz.
there where shares lines with the urta, with the snapper or with the grouperthis common fish from the Bay of Cádiz has quite reasonable prices that, even in fishmongers with medium-high tickets, is quite acceptable, since it rarely exceeds 30 euros per kilo.
However, in Cadiz fishmongers it is very easy see it for just 15 or 17 euros per kilowhich is why we recommend buying it if you want to surprise with a baked fish with the guarantee of Ángel León, who has talked about this fish on several occasions.
Powerful, with semi-fatty meat and also very common for cooked on the grill or to remove its loins and make it friedthe borriquet (Plectorhinchus mediterraneus) is one of those fish that go unnoticed beyond its catch area but, if you see it outside its latitudes, we recommend its purchase.
In the same way that happens with the black pomfret or the snapper, with which it shares a scientific family, the borriquete (also called a donkey, although the first nomenclature is the most common) is a tasty fish, easy to clean and descale (It has hard scales that, however, chef Ángel León prefers to leave because of the crunchy touch they provide).
In addition, as explained on the website Small hip flaskone of the national leaders in the capture and sale of wild almadraba tuna, the borriquete is a nectobenthic species that lives near sandy and muddy bottoms from 10 to 150 meters deep, feeding on other species such as shrimps and clams, that end up giving that seafood flavor to their meat and being Conil de la Frontera and Barbate the ports where it is most often found.
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Easy to recognize by an oblong and somewhat compressed bodyone of its characteristics is the small mouth, with the appearance of a sucker, and a dorsal fin with numerous hard and soft rays. Added to this is a greyish brown color, which can be more or less dark, and which makes it difficult to confuse the borriquete with other species that we see in our fishmongers.
Images | Small hip flask
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