I recently stumbled upon a Polish deli a bit outside of Denver, and picked up a can of paprikash, also labeled as "fish salad" — made with sardines and a bit of tomato and spices.
Frankly, it wasn't very good straight out of the can. But then I added an entire green pepper (diced), a half-sour pickle (also diced), and some capers. As I type this I'm eating the results on asiago bread with a thin sheen of mayonnaise, topped off with kale sprouts (both the bread and the sprouts from the local urban farmer's market.) This totally works.
So, I think paprikash has potential — but probably if I make it myself, rather than buying it pre-made in a can. Anybody out there have a good recipe for this fish salad? Everything I'm finding online seems to be a completely different dish, more of a stew.
This one doesn't involve sardines, but instead another often-overlooked prepard fish: gefilte fish.
Originally a way to serve a smaller fish to a larger number of people, gefilte fish is now a staple at most Jewish Passover dinners — and completely forgotten the rest of the year. It's just a bit sweet, contrasting with the strong Asian flavors of sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and wasabi (which might have been overwhelmed by the stronger taste of tinned sardines.) Soba is a quick-cooking,
versatile Japanese noodle made from buckwheat, giving it a more interesting flavor than plain wheat or rice noodles.
As usual, this is a recipe which leaves a lot of room for additional experimentation.
Boil the soba noodles according to the package. Soba is often found in bundles about 2" around, and I used half a bundle for this recipe.
Drain and rinse the soba under cold water for a minute or so, then drain further.
In a bowl, toss the soba with a few splashes of toasted sesame oil and rice vinegar.
In a separate bowl, mix a small amount of prepared wasabi (to taste) with 2-3 tablespoons of soy sauce.
Let it all rest for a minute, then mix the wasabi & soy again.
Place three large pieces of gefilte fish on top of the noodles, and drizzle the soy/wasabi mixture over them.
Garnish with a good kosher dill pickle (if you can't find a really good, fresh, crispy one, don't bother.)
Tomatoes and sardines balance well (or maybe it's that the tomato sauce covers up the taste), and also pair nicely with onion, carrots, peppers, and marjoram.
I was inspired by this Red Quinoa with Sardines recipe from The Food Site, but didn't have most of the ingredients — so I started basically from scratch.
Ingredients
2 tbsp canola oil
1 large white onion, diced
3 medium-sized carrots, diced
1/3 cup red, orange, and/or yellow sweet bell peppers, diced
1 15 oz. oval tin of sardines in tomato sauce
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 cup white wine
dried marjoram
Recipe
heat the oil in a saute pan
cook onion & carrots until the onion begins to become transparent
add the peppers, cook for a bit
open the can of sardines & set aside the fish
add the tomato sauce from the sardine can to the pot
add the can of diced tomatoes to the pot, including all liquid
stir in 2-3 big pinches of marjoram
let it simmer for about a minute
add quinoa & wine, cover
reduce heat & simmer for about 15 minutes
meanwhile, break apart the sardines & mix with another couple of big pinches of marjoram
cook for another 5-10 minutes
The result was tasty, not too fishy, but a bit too rich for a stand-alone meal. Next time I'll add more quinoa with some broth, or skip the quinoa entirely and serve it as a fishy sauce over pasta or rice — similar to a Bolognese. Another variation could be to use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, or skip them entirely.
Let us know what you come up with.
Check back later this week for Hope's kale & sardine pie — and we may found a source of fresh sardines up here, so we'll be experimenting with those soon too.
My friend & colleague Suresh Ramasubramanian sent this recipe, his take on a traditional Kerala fish curry. My wife Hope and I ate some very spicy fish curries while visiting India, but had no idea what fish they used; turns out that the "mathi" or "chaala" commonly eaten in Kerala and Tamil Nadu is our friend the sardine — always fresh, rather than tinned.
I look forward to trying this just as soon as I can find some fresh sardines up here in Denver.
Suresh writes:
This is a stew from kerala, india - you've been there JD .. (takes very
little - mostly additional ingredients such as galangal - to make it a
thai recipe).
Cut and clean the fish (deep and long cuts on either side, sharp
knife). Heat some oil In a pan, saute some cumin and mustard seeds,
then saute finely chopped ginger, garlic and green chili peppers
lightly - then add finely chopped onions and tomatoes, red pepper
powder, a pinch each of turmeric and coriander powder (you can get it
in indian groceries), sauté well. salt to taste .. and a splash or two
of vinegar.
Once you get yourself what looks like a thickish
gravy (the tomatoes will reduce) add the sardines and simmer them. Make
sure that the gravy just covers the sardines .. you dont want it to be
too liquid.
When the gravy starts to smell great tip some coconut milk (get it from thai groceries) into it, cook till done.
Serve this stew either spooned on top of rice, or with fresh bread.
If
you're in a hurry, you can probably skip the spices and vinegar, get a
thai curry paste of some sort in most thai grocery stores. And probably
use canned tomato puree instead of fresh tomatoes.
I tend to experiment wildly with food, rather than sticking to recipes — and to do so, I need to understand the flavor and texture of the ingredients. So, early in our experimentation with sardines, I decided to try 'em the old-fashioned way: on crackers.
What I enjoyed most — though it's certainly not for the culinarily non-adventurous — was to take a stoned wheat cracker, squeeze a line of sriracha (rooster) sauce on it, then place a sprat (a near cousin of the sardine, canned whole except for the head) on top.
I just stumbled across a Serious Eats article from a couple years ago, wherein Nick Kindelsperger posted a James Beard-inspired recipe for Deviled Sardines. Some of the comments include suggestions which sound even better:
Cannery Row is a clean, touristy restaurant district now (even though Pacific sardines are coming back), and the last sardine cannery in Maine is closing this week. It seems there are no more sardines being canned in the United States, which will disappoint any locavores — not that we have many choices for local fish up here in Denver.
So, where do tinned sardines come from?
Checking the labels of the tins in my pantry, I found:
Crown Prince (which we eat most often, because local health food chain Vitamin Cottage carries 'em) imports their fish from Morocco.
Season (second most often, because Whole Foods carries 'em) gets theirs from Scotland.
Bar Harbor kippers & herring are produced in Canada.
So, mostly Atlantic — but all over. Wikipedia tells us (without reference) that Morocco is the sardine capital of the world, producing 600,000 tons each year.
And to top it all off, there may be no such thing as a sardine. Depending on the region, tins of sardines may contain sprats (also known as brisling), small herring, or pilchards (which may also be a catch-all term for a variety of other species.) I think that'll have to be another article.
This recipe has become one of our staples: it's quick, tasty, easy (once you have the ingredients on hand), and takes well to continued experimentation.
1/4 cup shredded pickled vegetables (standard Japanese or Thai pickled vegetables: daikon, carrot, et cetera — optional)
Recipe
Drain the sardines & break them apart with a fork. (If they're in oil, you may be able to use that for cooking — or, feed the drained liquid to your cat.)
Place your wok or favorite frying/sauté pan on medium heat
Add ghee or olive oil, wait for it to heat up
Add rice, sardines, soy sauce, and nam pla
Toss them together (still on medium heat) for 3-5 minutes, until fully heated
Add vegetables (optional) and furikake; mix well
Add shredded nori one pinch at a time, still mixing (otherwise it tends to clump up)
Mix it all on the stove for another couple of minutes
A few months ago, my wife and I were sitting on the sofa in our little Victorian house near downtown Denver, reading articles about fish online. We've both been told that we should eat more Omega-3 fatty acids, and oily fish are always at the top of that list — but we're trying to get pregnant, so we're also wary of mercury — and we're concerned about overfishing, unhealthy farming practices, and other oceanic environmental issues.
We noticed that the articles about health all mentioned salmon, while the articles about the environment said that (most) farmed salmon is a disaster, and wild salmon varies depending on the source — and can be high in mercury. Tuna is lower in the health list, and also varies by source on the environmental lists — but it can be high in mercury. Trying to balance any of the most popular fish across all three lists (healthiness, environmental impact, and mercury content) is tough, but there are a few less-popular fish which seemed good.
Trout, catfish, and tilapia are farmed sustainably in the U.S., and they're low on the food chain (they don't subsist primarily on eating other fish) so there's less mercury build-up in their flesh. We were surprised to discover that there are even tilapia farms right here in Colorado, so far from natural waterways that there's very little chance of contamination in either direction. So, those three are now the fresh fish we'll eat most often.
Sardines also showed up on the good side of all three lists: the wild population is healthy, not in danger of being overfished, they're low in mercury, and they're high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Plus — and this was one of the main things that convinced us to try 'em — we can keep canned (tinned) sardines in the cabinet for those days when we don't have fresh fish in the fridge.
Neither my wife nor I had had much experience with sardines. I remember eating some fresh-caught, breaded, fried sardines in a street cafe in Brussels a few years ago; they were tasty with beer, but a bit odd to eat with the bones still inside. I don't recall ever seeing them fresh in the U.S., though we've both seen cans of sardines in grocery stores.
It's with those cans that we began our exploration. We quickly discovered that the boneless skinless sardines can be used in place of canned tuna in nearly any recipe: the classic tuna sardine salad, tuna sardine mac, tuna sardine casserole, et cetera. We've also stumbled across a few new ideas, such as the sardine rice which has become one of our most common quick dinners.
And as we explored, we noticed that sardines are quietly but steadily becoming popular: Alton Brown (long one of my culinary heroes) talked about them on Good Eats, NPR did a story, and our local health food stores carry multiple varieties. Yet there don't seem to be a lot of recipes or other resources online.
Welcome to the sardinefish blog.
I've started this site so we can share our sardine-related experiments and discoveries, and we welcome your comments and participation. Thanks for reading.
