Mackerel Fillets Mediterranean Style

Conservas Santos is a Portuguese conservas producer rooted in the traditions of the Iberian canning industry. This tin takes Atlantic mackerel fillets in the simplest possible Mediterranean direction: olive oil, oregano, and salt. Three ingredients. The kind of preparation that reminds you that Mediterranean cooking at its best is not about complexity but about the quality of the individual elements and the instinct to combine them well.

Mackerel fillets are richer and meatier than sardines — a substantial tin of full-flavoured fish with the natural fat content that makes mackerel one of the most satisfying things to eat from a tin. Oregano is the defining herb of the Mediterranean pantry: earthy, slightly resinous, intensely aromatic, and one of the few herbs that actually improves with drying, becoming more concentrated and pungent than it is fresh. In the tin it permeates the olive oil and the fish as they rest together, infusing the whole preparation with a warm, herbal depth that is unmistakably of the south. The result is a tin that could have come from a Portuguese kitchen, a Greek island kitchen, or an Italian one — the kind of preparation that belongs to a whole region rather than a single country. Eat it on bread, over pasta, with white beans and a drizzle of the oil from the tin.