Sardines

[Al Dente]

Have you ever seen these pathetic little excuses for fish? If I were to cook up a few of these tiny scale-covered bags of needle bones how would I go about it? Not that I would of course, but a pile of the little bastards caught my eye at Whole Foods, and I wondered what a lunatic would do with them. I seem to recall that those Mediterranean types throw them on the grill, no doubt marinating them in goat's urine or some such. After all, they eat those stinky cheeses and eat animal parts I've never heard of.

So if I were crazy enough to go about this, what would you advise on preparing these puny piscine pricks?

[Heather]

Dust with flour and fry until crispy, serve with a sauce of lemon/white wine/herbs

ETA: too much coffee this morning, Mike?

[mdt]

Dust with flour and fry until crispy, serve with a sauce of lemon/white wine/herbs.

Right on! I do the same thing when I find fresh smelt at the fish market.

[Heather]

If you don't want to bother with a sauce, a squeeze of lemon and some chopped parsley, thyme, or whatever. And a little chopped garlic.

[Waitman]

Have you ever seen these pathetic little excuses for fish? If I were to cook up a few of these tiny scale-covered bags of needle bones how would I go about it? Not that I would of course, but a pile of the little bastards caught my eye at Whole Foods, and I wondered what a lunatic would do with them. I seem to recall that those Mediterranean types throw them on the grill, no doubt marinating them in goat's urine or some such. After all, they eat those stinky cheeses and eat animal parts I've never heard of.

So if I were crazy enough to go about this, what would you advise on preparing these puny piscine pricks?

 

Great minds yada yada.

[Heather]

This looks delicious and simple.

[Al Dente]

[Come on peoples-- get your sardon on.]

[The Hersch]

Grilled sardines are among the standard classics of Portuguese cuisine. The way they do them: About an hour before cooking, sprinkle liberal amounts of coarse salt all over the fish. Just before cooking, rinse the fish, pat dry, and season with olive oil and more salt. Grill over hot coals, about three or four minutes per side. Serve with lemon wedges, boiled potatoes, and green salad.

You may find that this results in rather a salty grilled fish, but that's the way the Portuguese like them. Accompany with copious amounts of white wine.

This, to me, is the essence of Portugal.

[deangold]

Chef is adding fried fresh sardine and anchovy in a chunky spicy tomato sauce tonight.

[Mrs. B]

Beautiful fresh sardines at the Glover Park Whole Foods. I need help though. I foolishly told the fishmonger I didn't need him to clean them. If anyone has any tips about how to clean the creatures I would be most appreciative. I've never gutted a fish before.

[Waitman]

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QUOTE(Mrs. B @ Apr 21 2007, 01:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Beautiful fresh sardines at the Glover Park Whole Foods. I need help though. I foolishly told the fishmonger I didn't need him to clean them. If anyone has any tips about how to clean the creatures I would be most appreciative. I've never gutted a fish before.

Look here.

(The therapist said it would better for our marriage if we communicate like this).

[Anna Blume]

Honey Bunnies: I appreciate you all sticking up for the slender little fishies, I really do.

However, the best thing you can do to a sardine besides sparing its life is make it an honorary Sicilian.

Get yourself some salt-packed anchovies at Balducci's or D & D, Vace (etc.) if you must, pick up few heads of fennel in the produce aisles, some currants, some pine nuts, a good Sicilian olive oil, bucatini--or the best bronze-dye formed white-flecked thick spaghetti from Abruzzi--and the kind of bread you might not serve otherwise but would shave the crust off and make into bread crumbs YOURSELF--none of that pre-made crap.

Pasta con le sarde, Signor Dente, pasta con le sarde.

Here's one pretty good recipe: Click. It calls for golden raisins vs. currants which are also traditional in Sicily. I've made it without saffron which I prefer, but saffron is standard in Palermo, the home of its birth. Just whatever you do, do not follow a recipe (like Mario Batali's) that calls for tomatoes. You want to get yourself closer to the Middle-Eastern side of Sicilian food back in the early Middle Ages with none of those later American imported fruits.

More discussion here.

Adam's Figpecker sardines

which brings us to the birthplace of the European fork:

Ecco

Good site to know--one version of Venetian stuffed sardines*

There's also "in saor" as discussed in the Venetian cooking thread linked above from eG. A sweet & sour dish.

And in Liguria: Bagnun.

Lombardy? Another pasta dish.

And more decapitated ones, this time from Naples.

And for good measure, while this wonderful straight-laced old-fashioned looking professor from Sheboygan took these shots in Catania vs. Palermo, for good measure, here's the fish market, a very good reason to go to Sicily, indeed.

*General list from same site of all fish recipes; kept in Italian since all the sardine recipes are not translated into English: pesci.

[zoramargolis]

Thanks for all these great links. I have one of those large cans of salt-packed anchovies in my pantry. I have been loathe to open it, since the ingredient isn't one I've used much. If I were to obtain some fresh sardines and do the pasta con sarde, I will open the can and use some of the salt-packed anchovies. That will leave a number uneaten. Do you have some other suggestions for using them? Also, is rinsing sufficient, or is it necessary to soak them? I know I could get the answer by consulting my Italian cookbooks, but I thought I'd ask you first.

[Anna Blume]

Thanks for all these great links. I have one of those large cans of salt-packed anchovies in my pantry. I have been loathe to open it, since the ingredient isn't one I've used much. If I were to obtain some fresh sardines and do the pasta con sarde, I will open the can and use some of the salt-packed anchovies. That will leave a number uneaten. Do you have some other suggestions for using them? Also, is rinsing sufficient, or is it necessary to soak them? I know I could get the answer by consulting my Italian cookbooks, but I thought I'd ask you first.

I'm not sure we need another new thread on small, oily fish. Once you open the can, what you have to do with the anchovies will become evident.

Bottle all the contents you don't intend to use, being sure to keep the lot submerged under the layers of salt. They'll keep indefinitely that way in the back of the fridge. I still have some a good 9 months old that I feel comfortable eating.

Rub off the salt of the anchovies you plan to eat with your fingers (both readings acceptable), and then the skin under cold running water. The anchovy splits easily lengthwise, yielding to thumbs. You take out the bone with your fingers, easily too, and end up with two fillets approximately three times the size of what you get rolled around capers in flat tins.

I'm too tired to be creative about uses. Maybe it's time for another clever verse from paté's champion, though I don't know all the things those Francophiles do down in Provence. Aioli for sure. Then there are Spanish dishes, right?

I am sure you know about roasted peppers, capers and anchovies and anchovies on top of pizza. There's the classic method of leaving water clinging to the leaves of spinach, then dumping them into a sauté pan where you've let an anchovy or two dissolve in olive oil studded with slivers of garlic. Sprinkle in a bit of salt, cover a minute or more, then cook the leaves just until fully wilted and glistening with oil, but still briliant green.

A bagna cauda would be good, especially with all those new vegetables coming to market--or the beautiful French radishes there now. Puttanesca and countless pasta sauces you can think up yourself, e.g. EVOO, garlic, chopped olives and parsely with lots of black pepper. Sicilians use anchovies as flavoring accents more than as stars. Look through some of the cooking threads I linked above.

When I was young and Boursin was considered classy, I used to slice a wonderful salt-studded crusty loaf of bread from a small neighborhood market and spread on the cheese and drape anchovies over each piece.

[Anna Blume]

FYI: The May issue of Gourmet includes grilled sardines in one of its "exotic" travel-themed menus. Served with braised fennel (as in the Sicilian pasta) and preserved lemons. Photograph suggests one an advantage for the queasy cook if not the delicate diner: heads are left intact. (You still have to gut them since the fish mongers at Whole Foods slit the bellies for you, but do not remove all the entrails.)

[Anna Phor]

Is anyone here knowledgeable about sustainable fishing and sardines? My son and I like to share a weeknight supper of spaghetti and sardines on nights when it's just the two of us, and I was thinking I was being virtuous nutritionally, parentally, and environmentally. A friend has just shared an article about west coast sardine fishery collapses. Thoughts as to whether it seems like a good idea to lay off the little creatures for a while?

[KMango]

Does this help?

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch for Sardines

(billy joel is now stuck in my head)

(downeaster alexa)

(there are giants out there in the canyons)

[KMango]

The chum plot thickens.

Here's more context on why the newspaper article and the Seafood Watch ratings seem to reach different conclusions:

http://deepseanews.com/2012/05/how-to-eat-sardines-sustainably/

Gawds I love certain varieties of canned sardines.  Texans seem to adore them as well.  The selection I find on the shelves here is more diverse than I expected, as is all manner of kipper snacks.  I've seen odd varieties such as hot sauce with maple, an interesting assortment.

[DonRocks]

Gawds I love canned sardines.  

Mustard or olive oil?

[hungry prof]

Mustard or olive oil?

Olive oil.  I take it from all of this, though, that I should no longer be eating sardines from the Mediterranean.    In my extensive taste testing, the canned sardines from Spain and Portugal are by far the best, with my favorite being Matiz.  Wild Pacific are the best I've found fished from the Pacific, and in my view, they pale in comparison to the Spanish and Portuguese options (including both Matiz and Cole's, my other favorite).

And in case you didn't know it already, you can find everything on the internet:  I give you the Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine, where somebody has eaten a lot of sardines (and offers some useful reviews).

[DonRocks]

And in case you didn't know it already, you can find everything on the internet:  I give you the Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine, where somebody has eaten a lot of sardines (and offers some useful reviews).

There's also a competing group: Society for the Lowly, Unappreciated, Tinned Sardine (SLUTS).

(It's been awhile since one of my own posts has made me laugh out loud, but this one did.)

[TrelayneNYC]

I prefer them fresh.





Top: Sardines, mesclun, heirloom potatoes
Bottom: Marinated sardines, semolina bread, tomato and onion salad

[hungry prof]

Looks delicious.  I prefer them fresh as well, but they tend to be a bit tricky to cook at my desk midday.  

Canned sardine and avocado sandwiches worked for Alton Brown.  Forty-five pounds later, I can say they worked for me, too.

[Anna Phor]

thank you--those are helpful links, and I'm glad!

I do also like fresh sardines, but they don't keep in my pantry cupboard for a hundred years* and the canned ones are a perfect pantry staple that needs just a few other ingredients to become a meal.

*approx

[Ilaine]

Where I come from, canned sardines and kipper snacks are poor man's food.  Maybe poor woman's food, whatever.  Eaten by blue collar workers with a sleeve of saltines sitting outside at a work site.  A can of sardines and a sleeve of crackers.  Used to be one of my favorite things until I became gluten intolerant.  Not that I am blue collar, far from it.  I just loved it, back in the day.

Wish I hadn't read this thread.  Feeling sorry for myself, now.

Edited to add, actually with Glutino gluten free bagle chips about the same, except that the chips are too sweet, alas.

[Pat]

Where I come from, canned sardines and kipper snacks are poor man's food.  Maybe poor woman's food, whatever.  Eaten by blue collar workers with a sleeve of saltines sitting outside at a work site.  A can of sardines and a sleeve of crackers.  Used to be one of my favorite things until I became gluten intolerant.  Not that I am blue collar, far from it.  I just loved it, back in the day.

One of our family's typical weekend late afternoon snacks when I was growing up was canned sardines with saltines.  Maybe it's because both of my parents grew up during The Depression.  I'm not sure what the origin of their custom was.  I've always liked sardines and associate them with family weekends, though I don't eat them with saltines anymore.

The ones I've liked most recently are Bela sardines, from Portugal.  They're a bit bigger than the other other canned sardines I'm familiar with.  I've had them fresh but find they're big enough that the bones are a problem.  I'm kind of phobic about choking on fish bones.

More recently, I've read about the high levels of arsenic in sardines and wondered if I should cut back on my consumption.