There are dishes charged as a restaurant starter that are really just fish, vinegar and patience. Marinated anchovies are exactly that kind of dish - and where everyone goes wrong, they go wrong not in the recipe but in the one step they skip.

Freezing is not optional

Before anything else: cleaned fresh fish must be frozen for at least 48 hours. This is not advice for better flavour, it is protection against anisakis - a parasite destroyed by freezing, not by marinating. Vinegar makes the fish look cooked, but it does not sterilise it. Anyone who tells you vinegar is enough is giving you a culinary tip with a medical consequence.

Ingredients

600 grams of cleaned anchovies (previously frozen), 90 millilitres of white wine or cider vinegar, three cloves of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, fine salt and parsley. That is all - no flavoured oil, no powdered additive.

Method

Defrost the fish completely in the fridge, never on the counter. Then rinse it and dry it thoroughly with a cloth or paper - moisture is the real enemy here, because it dilutes the marinade. Lay the fillets side by side in a shallow dish and salt them.

Mix the marinade at a ratio of one part water to three parts vinegar and pour it over the fish. It stays in the fridge for eight to ten hours, depending on the size of the fillets. Small anchovies need less - leave them overnight out of habit and you get fish with the texture of rubber.

Once the flesh turns white, take the fish out, rinse it with water, drain it and dry it again. Only then come the olive oil, the finely chopped garlic and the parsley. One more hour in the fridge and the dish is done.

One warning about freezing after marinating

Technically you can, but do not do yourself that favour. After defrosting the texture is no longer the same - the marinade changes the structure of the flesh and a second freeze finishes it off. This dish is made for two days, not for storing.

The whole procedure takes less than fifteen minutes of active work, spread across two days of waiting. It is a recipe that demands no skill, only organisation - and that is precisely why it was invented at a time when nobody had either a fridge or a choice.