Pescaíto Frito

Andalusian — Cádiz, Málaga, and the Atlantic coast — codified by the 19th century as a working port-town meal sold from freidurías (frying shops). The chickpea flour mix is a Sephardic Jewish inheritance, brought south through medieval Iberia and absorbed into Andalusian cooking after the 1492 expulsion. London's fish-and-chips arguably descends from this preparation, brought by Sephardic refugees in the 16th–17th centuries.

Cádiz beachfront staple — tiny fish (boquerones, puntillitas, acedías) dredged only in chickpea-and-wheat flour blend and flash-fried in hot olive oil. Lemon, no sauce. The Sephardic technique that became London's fish-and-chips.

A heaped paper cone or wide plate of small fish — anchovy, red mullet, baby squid, hake strips — coated in a thin chickpea-and-wheat flour dusting, deep-fried in olive oil until the tails curl gold. Salt while still hot, lemon at the table. Eat with fingers, immediately. The coating should crackle without armor — if it's thick or greasy, the cook went wrong.

Chickpea flour is the structural choice, not wheat alone. It absorbs less oil, sets crisper at lower temperatures, and stays crisp longer because it's gluten-free — wheat-only batter goes leathery as it cools. Oil temperature 180–190 °C, fish dipped briefly, no batter drip-time — straight from flour bowl into oil so the coating is barely there. Heavy batter is the tell of an inland kitchen.