Anchovy

Gavros is a small silver fish caught in quantity across the Aegean, and the Greek approach to it has almost nothing in common with the salted anchovy fillet sold in tins elsewhere. It arrives fresh and is cleaned by hand, pinching the head off and running a thumb along the backbone to lift it out whole, which takes seconds once the movement has been learned.

Gavros marinatos is the dish it is best known for: raw fillets cured for a few hours in vinegar until the flesh turns opaque and white, then drained and covered in olive oil with garlic and parsley. It is a standard ouzeri meze, served cold in a shallow dish and eaten with bread rather than cooked any further.

The other treatment is simpler still, whole fish tossed in flour and fried hard in hot oil until crisp, then eaten with lemon and nothing else at all. Fresh anchovies are cheap and are meant to be, so freshness matters far more than quantity: they soften quickly, and a batch more than a day old falls apart in the pan instead of crisping.