Corfiot Savoro (Σαβόρο Κέρκυρας)

Savoro of Corfu is fried small fish put away under vinegar, rosemary, garlic, and black currants until the sauce turns sharp, sweet, and piney. It belongs to the Ionian table, where a plate can be cooked today and better tomorrow. The fish is not decoration for the sauce. It is the reason the sauce exists.

The method that decides it is the pouring. Fry the fish, make the vinegar sauce in the same pan, then spoon it over while everything is still warm so the acid and oil move into the flour-crisp edges. Be timid with the vinegar and you've made fried fish with perfume. Savoro must taste awake.

I serve it cool or at room temperature, with bread and bitter greens. The currants soften, the garlic calms down, and the rosemary gives the whole dish its Ionian voice. In my notebook I write Corfu beside it, because the region is the dish's surname. I don't invent it. I find it, I test it, I write it down.