4 September 2008

Portuguese Fish: Sargos

Hi everyone.
Because Portugal is a seaside country, we have very good quality fresh fish and seafood all year round. Portugal imports seafood and some fish from European countries, like Codfish from Norway, Shrimps from Moçambique, etc, but we do have our own, like the typical Sardines.
My husband has a friend which is a fisherman. Last week my hubby meet him at the cafe. Look what he brought home:



These are "Sargos". Sargos are common in Portugal, we call the smaller Sargos "Sarguetas". I decided to fry them.
First I cleaned the fish and removed it´s bellies. Then, I salted the fish and left it to rest about an hour. After that, I used flour to roll them and used hot vegetable oil to fry. One fish was too big to fry, so I cuted it in two. They looked like this:



To guarnish my fish dish I made a patatoe salad and used a typical Portuguese salad dressing. I´ll post this potatoe salad and dressing recipe in a future post.
This combination worked great, in the end, it looked like this:

8 comments:

Rachel said...

You are so clever knowing how to prepare fresh fish and cook them! I guess it is something that I have never been taught and as a result I tend to get most of my fish from the freezer. I really must start to eat more oily fish and so must start trying recipes like yours.

Babette said...

I love whole fish! Fish this size is perfect for frying. I like mine very crispy and eat it with rice and cut fresh tomatoes on the side.

Mizé said...

Hi Rachel.
I´m originally from Setubal, a big city known as "The city of the Fish".
When I was younger, and lived there, I had many friends who were fishing for a living. They taught me so much...not only about fish but life itself.
It´s not difficult to prepare fish, but maybe a tutorial would be a nice post. Next time, I´ll take pics of that too.
Once you need Omega 3 oily fish to balance your diet, I suggest: salmon, sardines, tuna, and swordfish, they´re great.
Cheers.

Mizé said...

Hi Babette.
To fry, I like smaller size but this was an offer, we couldn´t choose.
I´m like you, I like them very crispy. Sometimes I do tomatoe, or carrots and beens rice to guarnish fried fish dishes but a salad like this, a type of gaspacho, goes well too.
Ummm, food talk makes me hungry I´m going to check what´s in my fridge for a bite :)
Cheers.

Unknown said...

Wow, that fish looks delicious!

ctdweller said...

I know that some people like eating fish heads but if you're not one of those, you can minimize cooking time and save on cooking oil, by removing the head and tails altogether at the time you are cleaning and washing the fish.

I do this even to very small types of fish we have in this country which they call "tawilis". Very good for frying and goes with pickled veggies and vegetable salads.

Cheers!

Mizé said...

Hi Lotus Flower. Thanks for your visit and comment.
I don´t like the fish heads but my husband does. It is impressive how he eats everything in a fried fish. I sometimes joke with. I say that a cat wouldn´t have much of chance to eat something from his leftovers:)
You´re right, if we remove the fish head we save a lot in oil. I normally do that when the fish is bought in one day to be cooked in the next day.
In Portugal we also have very small fish in various types. Very small sardines are "Petingas" and Carapaus are "Jaquinzinhos". I like them like you, with veg salads or different types of rice, for example, tomatoe and sweet pepper rice.
I love food talk and exchanging knowledge. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

sorry I am grossed out by the whole bubbled out eyes... thats the only reason I wont eat fish is that kinda creaps me out.

but the dish does look good though!

~ Christopher ~

http://cmarlow480.blogspot.com/