Pickled sardines (Sardines en escabetx)

This is a  traditional Catalan dish. This recipe is from my grandma (she is now 96 years old). So at least this must be healthy for reaching that age!. This was a way to preserve the food, when there were no refrigerators.

I also have tried the same recipe with other similar blue fishes like fresh anchovies (Seitó) (Engraulis encrasicholus), and it taste delicious too. You can do it with other similar fishes similar to sardines (Sardina pilchardus).

You will need for 2 people:

500 gr of sardines

flour

salt

olive oil

3 teaspoons of paprika

4 tablespoons of vinegar (not balsamic)

3 cloves of garlic

thyme

1-2 bay leaves

First clean the sardines to get the fish gutted (remove head, fins and viscera). Remove the water. Salt them. Coat in flour. Remove the extra flour. 

Put the sardines in a saucepan with oil with a bay leaf and fry them (not toasted). Put them in a bowl or a soup dish and add the oil of the saucepan. Add some more oil in the saucepan and fry some cloves of garlic sliced with another leaf of bay and thyme. Be careful not to toast too much the garlic. Add at the end the vinegar and paprika just to mix these with the other things and put all these together with the sardines. Paprika should not be overfried, just put it in the saucepan for a moment in order to mix it with the other elements. And add more oil to the sardines till you cover them (some people use some water too). 

Let this cool down and put it in the fridge. You can eat it in several ways, but just with some bread it is delicious. Let it marinated for at least 3 hours. The longer the better. 

Enjoy! Bon Profit