Shkara (stewed fish) is a simple old and extremely popular Odessa dish.
Shkara used to be cooked everywhere in Odessa. Then true Odessa residents left and one just couldn’t find enough scad. Now scad is back and only few people remember the recipe of correct and very tasty shkara. Aleksei Meniaylov is a true Odessa resident and just a great person who shared this recipe, tells that his grandmother taught him to stew shkara. And his grandmother learnt from the Greeks.
But who taught the Greeks is a mystery.
Ingredients
Method
- Rinse the fish under cold water and pat dry; leave the heads on.
- Gut any fish longer than 15 cm: slit the belly, pull out the insides and rinse the cavity.
- Put the salt, sugar, allspice, peppercorns and lemon juice in the jug.
- Pour the boiling water over the tea and leave it to brew for 5 minutes, until very strong and dark.
- Strain the tea over the spices and stir until the salt and sugar dissolve.
- Leave the tea mixture for 15 minutes to cool until just warm, then stir in the oil.
- Slice the onions into thin rings.
- Lay a snug layer of fish in the saucepan and cover it with onion rings and a bay leaf.
- Repeat the layers, finishing with onion.
- Pour the tea mixture over the fish; it should almost cover it, so add a little water if needed.
- Press the small plate down on top of the fish.
- Cover with the lid and bring to a bare simmer over medium-low heat.
- Turn the heat to low and stew for 1 hour, with only an occasional bubble, until the flesh lifts easily off the bone.
- Serve hot with boiled potatoes, spooning over the onions and juices.
- To serve it cold, let it cool, refrigerate within 2 hours and eat within 2 days.
- Wash and dry fish. Don’t gut it.
- Put salt, pepper, sugar. Add lemon juice.
- Make strong tea, sift it.
- Cover spices with hot tea.
- Mix till salt and sugar fully dissolve.
- Add oil into the solution when cooled.
- Cut the onion into circles.
- Put a layer of fish into a small cooking pot (stewpot, deep pan).
- Cover the fish layer with layer of onion and bay leaf.
- Continue layer by layer till the last layer of fish is covered with onion circles.
- Cover the content of the pot with the solution cooked and in order to avoid “bouncing” during cooking press with plate.
- Close with lid and with the left plate inside cook on small fire.
- The dish will be ready in an hour.
- When hot, it tastes well with boiled potato.
- And it's a great snack when cooled
- Bon Appetit!
What we changed for home
- Scad can be replaced with fresh sardines or small mackerel Scad, also called horse mackerel, is sold in Spain and Portugal as jurel or carapau and at Japanese fishmongers as aji; sardines and small mackerel are oily fish that stew the same way.
- Fish longer than 15 cm gutted; heads left on The chef cooks small Black Sea scad whole. The insides of larger fish make the stew bitter.
- Amounts raised by half, to 750 g of fish, for four 500 g of whole fish with heads makes two main courses or four small snacks.
- Salt given by weight: 25 g of coarse salt A tablespoon of fine salt is almost twice as salty as a tablespoon of flaky salt, so weight is safer.
- Black peppercorns added, and amounts given for the allspice and bay leaves The method adds pepper that is not on the list, the allspice has no amount, and '1 tsp bay leaf' is read as crumbled leaf, about 3–4 whole leaves.
- Cooking time set at 1 hour The recipe header says 45 minutes and the method an hour; the full hour is what softens the small bones.
- 'Oil' given as refined sunflower oil The original says only 'oil'; sunflower oil is the everyday oil in Odesa kitchens.
- Cold shkara refrigerated within 2 hours and eaten within 2 days The chef also serves it cold as a snack, and cooked fish spoils quickly at room temperature.
The dish in the photograph was cooked by the restaurant for this story. Photo: Oleksandr Slyadnyev.
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