Main course Fasting
Fried cironki
Small lake fish rolled in flour and fried whole — fasting food from the shores of Ohrid and Dojran.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Total
- 30 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 9 ingredients
Method
- If the fish is fresh, scale and gut it; if it is dried and salted, soak it in cold water for an hour, changing the water twice.
- Dry the fish very thoroughly with a cloth. Wet fish in hot oil spits and never crusts.
- Mix the two flours with the salt and paprika. The cornmeal is what gives the crisp shell; plain flour alone leaves a soft coating.
- Heat oil about two fingers deep in a wide pan. Test it with one fish — it should sizzle at once.
- Roll the fish in the flour, shake off the excess and fry in batches for 3–4 minutes, turning once. Do not crowd the pan, or the temperature drops and the fish drinks oil.
- Lift them onto a rack, not onto paper — on paper the underside goes soft.
- Scatter with coarse salt, finely chopped garlic and parsley, and serve at once with plenty of lemon.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Cironki
- Fresh or frozen sprats, whitebait or small sardines; you want fish small enough to eat whole.
- Cornmeal
- Fine polenta or semolina; for the crispest shell use half of each.
- Sunflower oil
- Any oil with a high smoke point; olive oil is not suited to this temperature.
