Small fish, squid and pieces of dogfish tossed in flour and fried fast in hot olive oil, eaten crisp with salt and lemon.
What makes it pescaíto frito
Small whole fish and pieces of fish, floured, never battered.
Fried hot and fast in olive oil.
Salt and lemon, and nothing else.
Where it comes from
Fish has been fried along Andalucía's coasts for a very long time, and Cádiz is known for its freidurías, shops that fry it to order and sell it in paper cones. Málaga fries its own the same way, with small anchovies, boquerones, the favourite.
The secret, most cooks agree, is the flour — a coarse hard-wheat flour that doesn't soak up the oil — and oil hot enough that the fish cooks before it can go soggy. A link to English fried fish, by way of Iberian Jewish cooks, is often suggested and hard to settle.
How it varies
Cazón en adobo
Dogfish marinated in vinegar, cumin and oregano before frying.
Tortillitas de camarones
Cádiz's lacy fritters of tiny shrimp and chickpea flour.