Fish

The colorful fish that graces restaurant menus and that no one calls by its official name

At the Via Veneto restaurant in Barcelona, they cook the lorikeets in flour and fry them, and chef David Andrés presents them with Maresme tomatoes or puffed potatoes.

Chef David Andrés and director Pere Monje, from the Via Veneto restaurant, with a plate of raores, recently received from fishermen in the Maresme region.
4 min

BarcelonaHe little cry, as the raor fish is popularly known (Xyrichtys novacula), has gone from being an unknown fish to arousing passion in season, which is right now in Catalonia, and also in August. "When we started working with it, more than fifteen years ago, no one knew it and we had to explain what it was like," recalls Pere Monje, director of the Via Veneto restaurant in Barcelona, who features it on the menu these days. "They come to us directly from the Maresme region, and the supplier, who fishes for them with a line, tells us daily how many he has," Monje continues. The day we interviewed Pere Monje and the chef David Andrés There was half a kilo. And what a half kilo! At the market, a kilo of parrots It can cost around sixty or more euros.

Chefs say that the raor is such a good fish that little intervention is required in the kitchen.

In Maresme, where the sharks are mainly caught, the chef Carme Ruscalleda had also cooked for him in the now defunct Sant Pau restaurant, and she herself had spread the word.

We enter the chapter of curiosities. little cry It has a season that is not currently marked by any closed season regulations, as confirmed by the Ministry of Agriculture. So July and August are peak fishing times, although the fish are reproducing at the time. Hence the desire to implement closed season regulations, which will surely imitate those of the Balearic Islands, where fishing is allowed from September 1st to March 31st. That is, at a time when their reproduction is respected. So, right now in Catalonia, it is time to parrots, you can fish, but it probably won't be like that next summer. Now, implementing a ban isn't easy, and it's still too early to say what times of the year fishing will be prohibited.

Continuing with the curiosities, we should focus on the name. The fishermen we asked in a popular street survey said they are called parrots for its bright and striking colors, although some also claim that it is because of the shape of the mouth, which looks like a beak.

WEB Raor

To continue, the colors that could be named with a popular word precisely explain in detail what they are like. "The parrots "They are born female, and their skin then takes on shades of pink, red, and orange. When they grow, and reach approximately seventeen centimeters in size, they change sex (they are proterogynous hermaphroditic fish), and their skin color changes to greenish, blue, and gray tones," says scientist Arnau Subías, who works for Chef Rafa Zafra's Amar restaurant. parrots females and males, because their colors give them away.

In the sea they live territorially, and the expression means that they live in groups of females, including a male, who defends them so that no predator attacks them.

In the kitchen, Arnau Subías maintains that females and males have the same flavor, but their texture can change. "Females are smaller and, therefore, can have a softer and more delicate texture, while males, being larger, can have a different texture," he explains. But in practice it is a matter of subtleties, because the meat of the parrots It is one of the most tender, white, and prized fishes in existence, hence the great success it has had in restaurants seeking the highest quality. "Its quality and closed seasons also mean it has a high price in the market," says Subías, who comments that little cry It is from the Mediterranean but also from the Atlantic, both eastern and western.

Sandy bottom fish

We return to the dining room of the Via Veneto restaurant, and Pere Monje tells that when they explain to the customer what the little cry They say it resembles a dock, but it isn't, because its flesh is whiter. They also compare it to sole, but they are also told that it isn't either. little cry It is neither a rock fish (like the docks) nor a flat fish (like the sole). little cry It's a sandy-bottomed fish that lives at shallow depths. Living on sandy bottoms, they hide precisely when they see potential predators that could attack them. And it's here in sandy areas where they're caught with rods and hooks, which bite.

In the kitchen of the Via Veneto restaurant, chef David Andrés explains how to cook it so that the raor shines on the plate. "We fillet them and fry them at the moment they're asked," says Andrés, who comments that it's such a good fish that it doesn't need too much complication to express its flavor. He accompanies it with potatoes or tomatoes from Maresme, which is a way of closing the circle as a local product.

The bright colors and mouth of the raores have made them popularly known as parrots.

Regarding its increasing value, Andrés and Monje believe that parrots could be compared to peas from Maresme. "People understand the season, we know it has a short seasonality, and that it is a fish that requires delicate, low-intervention cooking because it is delicate," they say. In fact, the same statements would be comparable to peas.

But not everything is similar, because parrots They have a lot of shrinkage in preparation, because when they are deboned, 60% of their body is lost. "If they are small, then the parrots They are fried directly, without removing the bones; when they are larger, that's when we fillet them, and we normally buy a large caliber," says Andrés. When he fries them, the little cry It contracts, and visually resembles a cannelloni. In the mouth, the crunchy scales contrast with the tender and delicate meat. "We achieve this crunchiness by flouring the skin, which protects the meat, so that it doesn't lose water during the cooking process," explains the chef of the Via Veneto restaurant.

Finally, Monje and Andrés agree that it is one of the fish that demonstrates the season we are in. If there is a tray of parrots, the sweltering summer weather has arrived. If we were in the Balearic Islands, having them on the table would remind us that autumn has arrived. One way or another, parrots These are good reasons to be aware of the times we live in.

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