Bourdeto Recipe (Corfu Spicy Fish Stew)

Bourdeto is the spiciest member of Corfu's small family of distinctively spiced dishes, standing alongside sofrito and pastitsada as evidence of the island's centuries under Venetian and, before that, Genoese rule, which left it with a spice cabinet that leans on paprika and chilli in a way the rest of Greece generally does not.

Traditionally made with scorpionfish, a firm, bony rockfish common in the Ionian, though any firm white fish works well, the dish builds its whole character from a generous quantity of sweet paprika and a smaller, careful amount of hot paprika or cayenne, cooked into the onions before the fish goes in, rather than from tomato, which barely features.

It is a genuinely fast dish once the sauce base is built, since the fish itself needs only ten to fifteen minutes to cook through, and it rewards good crusty bread at the table to mop up the bright red, richly spiced sauce.

Key preparation steps

1. Cook onion down slowly until soft and sweet.
2. Stir in a generous quantity of sweet and hot paprika before any liquid goes in.
3. Add the fish and a little water, and simmer gently until just cooked through.
4. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and serve with bread.

Building the paprika base

Cook a large quantity of sliced onion slowly in olive oil until genuinely soft and sweet, which takes a full fifteen minutes over a low heat and is worth not rushing, since the onion is doing much of the work a tomato base would do in a different Greek fish stew.

Add the paprika, both sweet and hot, off the heat or over a very low one, and stir it through the softened onions for thirty seconds to release its aroma before any liquid goes in. Adding paprika to a very hot pan risks scorching it, which turns bitter fast.

Choosing the fish

Scorpionfish is the traditional choice, a firm, well-flavoured but bony rockfish suited to a stew where the pieces stay whole rather than flaking apart. Outside Corfu, a firm white fish such as monkfish, grouper or a similar dense-fleshed variety is the sensible substitute.

Cut the fish into large, even pieces so they cook through at the same rate, and add them only once the paprika base is properly built, since fish needs far less cooking time than the sauce does to develop.

Getting the simmer right

Add just enough water to come partway up the fish, not to fully submerge it, and simmer gently rather than at a rolling boil, which would break the fish apart. Ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough for firm white fish pieces to cook through.

The sauce should reduce and thicken slightly as it cooks, staying a deep, bright red-orange from the paprika rather than looking watery. A squeeze of lemon at the end brightens what is otherwise quite a rich, warmly spiced dish.

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