Mackerel Salad

Summertime is coming! A fresh fish salad with crispy lettuce and Italian radicchio, sweet raisins and fragrant pine nuts. Flavored with top quality Monti Iblei DOP Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar and Pitted Sicilian Nocellara del Belice DOP Green Olives. Ready? Let’s go to the kitchen and follow the video-recipe our chefs have prepared for you.

  • Time

    1 hour

  • Difficulty

    Easy

  • Course

    Second Courses

Ingredients

Servings 4

For Vinegar Court Bouillon

  • 1 cup vinegar
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 onion
  • 1 stalk celery
  • 5 whole peppercorns
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 8 cups water

Preparation

15 minutes preparation + 45 minutes cooking

Prepare the court bouillon with all the ingredients mixed together and let it boil for 30 minutes.
In the meantime, gut the mackerel, rinsing it well under running water.

Wash the lettuce and the radicchio; soak the raisins in water.
Slice the Academia Barilla Pitted Sicilian Green Olives in half.

Boil the mackerel in the court bouillon for 10-12 minutes (depending on the size).
Allow to cool.

Fillet and bone it in order to produce 4 fillet pieces from each.
Chop the lettuce and radicchio leaves according to your liking; add chopped parsley, mint and chives and mix.

Dress the salad with Academia Barilla Balsamic Vinegar of Modena and Blood Orange Sea Salt and toss.
Drizzle Academia Barilla Monti Iblei D.O.P. Extra Virgin Olive Oil over the top.

Transfer the salad to a plate; add the olives, raisins, pine nuts and the mackerel fillets.

Finish off the dish with Academia Barilla Monti Iblei D.O.P. Extra Virgin Olive Oil and pepper.

Check out our video below for more preparation details!
Buon appetito!

Food History

The custom of eating salad and vegetable in general is one of the elements that has historically characterized the diet of the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, dating all the way back to the ancient Romans. At the tine, a frugal diet, rich in vegetables, was considered healthy and praiseworthy, compared to the meat heavy diet of the barbarians. Recipes for vegetable-based dishes were based down through the centuries. Vegetables played such an important role in Italian gastronomy that in the 16th century, Costanzo Felici, a doctor, wrote a thesis on how to cultivate and cook hundreds of plants. He testifies that the Italian custom of eating vegetables was viewed as strange by other Europeans who mocked the Italians for stealing food from wild animals.

Did you known that...

the term “insalata” (Italian for salad) derives from the Latin “sal”, meaning salt? According to ancient medical theories, salt and vinegar with the right ingredients to use to dress a salad because they helped to naturally dry out any excess moisture in the vegetables.

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