Boquerones en Vinagre (Fresh Anchovies Cured in Vinegar)

Name: Boquerones en Vinagre (Fresh Anchovies Cured in Vinegar)
Prep time: 40 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Spanish
Ingredients: 500 g fresh anchovies; 500 ml cold water; 1 tbsp salt; 250 ml white wine vinegar; 50 ml water; 100 ml extra virgin olive oil; 2 cloves garlic; 1 handful flat-leaf parsley

A standard Spanish bar tapa. Fresh anchovies are filleted, soaked three hours in brine and six in vinegar until the brown flesh is white all through, then laid in olive oil with garlic and parsley and served cold. Nothing is cooked, so the fish is frozen first.

Ingredients

4servings

Anchovies
fresh anchovies · about a palm long500 g
Cure
cold water500 ml
salt · for the brine1 tbsp
white wine vinegar250 ml
water · for the vinegar50 ml
To finish
extra virgin olive oil100 ml
garlic · finely chopped2 cloves
flat-leaf parsley · chopped1 handful

Steps

Pull off the heads and guts, open each anchovy along the spine with your thumb and lift the bone out. Rinse the two fillets in cold water a few times to clear the blood.
⏲ 25 min
Drain, freeze at −20°C or colder for at least 7 days, then thaw in the fridge. Vinegar does not kill parasites (freezing and thawing).
Dissolve the salt in the cold water in a glass or ceramic dish, lay the fillets in so they are covered and leave 3 hours in the fridge. Not a metal dish.
Pour off the brine, cover the fillets with the vinegar and water and leave about 6 hours in the fridge. Break one open: when it is white all the way through, it is done.
Pour off the vinegar and lay the fillets out on a plate. Scatter over the garlic and parsley and pour on enough olive oil to cover. Serve cold.
⏲ 5 min

Variations

Bocartes en vinagre. Another name for the same dish.
With crisps. Spanish bars serve them with capers or olives and a plate of potato crisps.
Inun-unan. The Philippine dish that boils the same kind of small fish in vinegar. Here the vinegar does the work cold; there the heat does it.

Tips

Freeze the fish first. Vinegar does not kill parasites.
Glass or ceramic. The acid in the vinegar attacks metal.
White all the way through means done.
Keep them under oil in the fridge.
Beer rather than wine. Spanish Wikipedia says the vinegar sits badly with wine and suggests beer.
Neither vinegar nor salt kills parasites. That is what kakinoha-zushi says of its salted, vinegared mackerel. Spanish Wikipedia says the same of anisakis in boquerones, and tells you to freeze the fish first.

More detail and the reasons why (1)

Not ceviche's clock. Ceviche keeps its marinating short, two to five minutes, and cures only the surface. This dish takes hours: as Spanish Wikipedia puts it, the fillets, brown at first, turn white as the vinegar works. The fillets are thin, so the change goes all the way through.