Red Mullet

Barbouni is usually the most expensive small fish on a Greek taverna's price list, and it earns that position: the flesh is firm and faintly sweet, quite unlike the cheaper fish sitting beside it on the ice. It is a seasonal fish, at its best in autumn, and it is bought whole and small rather than filleted or cut into portions.

Frying is the standard treatment, the whole fish dusted in flour and cooked hard in hot oil, then served with lemon and often a spoonful of skordalia. Traditionally barbounia are cooked without gutting, since the liver is considered part of what makes the fish worth eating, though a fishmonger outside Greece will usually have gutted them before they reach the counter.

The Ionian islands preserve them differently, in savoro: fried first, then covered in a hot dressing of vinegar, rosemary and currants, a Venetian-derived method that let fried fish keep for days without any refrigeration. Larger red mullet are better grilled than fried, and either way the skin needs to be dried thoroughly before it meets hot oil or a grill.