Mackerel Salad — My Psarosalata Plate, Casa Adora

I was sitting outside La Buena Vida, Alicia's bar, after shopping at Marta's store. Coffee, morning sun, Issy at my feet. My mind drifted — as it does — to somewhere else entirely. Rural Greece. Florie parked in a dusty carpark by a rustic beach, first week of September, the vacationers long gone back to Athens. A small taverna, almost empty. A guy behind the counter who asked if I wanted a beer. I said I wanted to eat. Did he have fresh fish? Hopefully. Just tinned, he said — we're only open July and August, and the season is done. He suggested psarosalata. That sounded like mackerel salad to me.

I came home and made it.

A psarosalata plate is the Greek answer to what you do with good tinned fish, a few things from the fridge, and an honest appetite. My version is built around tinned mackerel — a fish that rewards this kind of treatment far more than it gets credit for — with cherry tomatoes and feta dressed with oregano and lemon, leftover boiled potatoes, piquillo peppers, pickled guindilla chillies, silverskin onions, hard boiled egg, and flat-leaf parsley over everything. Olive oil, salt, black pepper.

The potatoes are leftovers from the fridge — cold or room temperature is exactly right here, and the resistant starch in cooled potatoes is a genuine gut health bonus — more on that in my gut health recipes.

It took ten minutes. It tasted like the right thing to eat on a September evening in Andalucía, daydreaming about Greece. If a tin of mackerel is what you have, my tinned mackerel recipes have plenty more ideas, and my Tinned Fish Recipes guide covers the other tins.

Serves 1

How to Make a Mackerel Salad Plate

Ingredients

• 1 tin mackerel in olive oil, drained
• 150g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 75g feta, crumbled
• 1 hard boiled egg, halved
• 2 medium potatoes, boiled and cooled (leftovers from the fridge)
• 4-5 piquillo peppers (pimientos del piquillo)
• 4-5 pickled guindilla chillies
• A few silverskin pickled onions
• 2 white asparagus spears (from a jar), drained
• Small handful flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Dried oregano
• Juice of ½ lemon
• Olive oil
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Dress the tomatoes and feta: In a small bowl, combine the cherry tomatoes and feta. Add a pinch of dried oregano, a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and black pepper. Toss gently and set aside.
2. Arrange the plate: Arrange everything on a wide plate — mackerel, tomato and feta, boiled potatoes, piquillo peppers, white asparagus spears, guindillas, silverskin onions, and the halved egg.
3. Finish and serve: Scatter parsley over the whole plate, drizzle generously with olive oil, squeeze over the remaining lemon, and season with salt and black pepper. Serve immediately with bread alongside if you have it.

If this mackerel salad plate sent you daydreaming about Greece too, you can buy me a coffee ☕ — it helps keep the site going.

Footnote

This mackerel salad is part of my Greek Recipes collection, my Tinned Mackerel Recipes collection, my Tinned Fish Recipes guide and my Inland Fish and Seafood hub, a collection of resourceful ways to prepare the sea's bounty from the heart of rural Spain.
Find more recipes and food adventures here.
Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures – The Flexible Chef