Fresh Sardines

[Busboy]

Mrs. Busboy just scored a dozen fresh sardines. We like them. But we've never cooked them. Do they need to be boned before cooking? I can't remember the details of the few times we've eaten them. Anyone have a simple recipe? I seem to recall oregano or marjoram working well, and lemon.

Any and all hints and suggestions gratefully accepted.

[AlexP]

If you have the chance, I would grill them. I was lucky to get some fresh ones back in the summer and they were delicious grilled. These ones were about 9 to 10 inches in size. Back in Spain, if they are smaller, my mother usually pan fries them.

The taste is quite strong, so in my opinion, some sea salt is sufficient. There might be dishes out there more elaborate, but in Minneapolis they are quite hard to find, so eating them with the less preparation was my first choice to enjoy them full.

Whatever method and recipe you use, I do not think you need to remove the bones. They are quite soft and they would not affect the cooking.

Have fun

Alex

[slkinsey]

One of the best things to do is to fillet them + put them in a dish all in one layer. Then squeeze the juice of several lemons over the top + let stand in the refrigerator for a few hours. After that, cover with good evoo and a hefty pinch of crushed red pepper + let stand a few more hours. Remove from the refrigerator, spinkle with chopped parsley (and/or oregano and/or marjoram, if you like), allow it to come up to room temp and eat. Delicious.

[ianeccleston]

Wow, I would love to have some fresh sardines. I'd make the sicilian pasta with wild fennel (or domestic fennel fronds), raisins, pine nuts and saffron. It's heavenly.

[ludja]

One of the best things to do is to fillet them + put them in a dish all in one layer. Then squeeze the juice of several lemons over the top + let stand in the refrigerator for a few hours. After that, cover with good evoo and a hefty pinch of crushed red pepper + let stand a few more hours. Remove from the refrigerator, spinkle with chopped parsley (and/or oregano and/or marjoram, if you like), allow it to come up to room temp and eat. Delicious.

Congrats on getting some nice fresh sardines!

Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook suggests a similar treatment to slkiinsey's and gives another possibility. Take the marinated fillets, place on some halved baguettes and toast in oven for ~ 5min. (toast the bread and cook the fillets a little).

I also love grilled sardines as AlexP suggested.

I had them my first time in a very romantic setting in Brittany. We were staying in a farmhouse and grilled them in the fireplace. Very memorable! We had a nice green salad and some aioli with.

[docsconz]

A truly fresh simply grilled sardine is one of my favorite foods. How did you come by them?

[Busboy]

A truly fresh simply grilled sardine is one of my favorite foods. How did you come by them?

We recently discovered that the slightly grim mercado in our neighborhood gets great fish in a couple of times a week, allegedly Thursday and Saturday, in addition to the ice-bins full very nasty stuff that kept us from buying fish there for four years. My wife went by this PM, thinking to score some yellowtail or rockfish to bake with jerk spicing and found out that all the fish were nasty.

So she dropped by Whole Foods where, for the first time ever (as far as we know) they had fresh sardines, which I've been craving since a recent trip to Greece.

Being the kind of people who cook on the fly, she bought the guys figuring that, between the 80 cookbooks, our own modest experence and eGullet, we'd find something to do with them.

Thanks for your suggestions, all. If the supply keeps up, I'm sure we'll cook through them all (Sam, she says they're a day too late for simply marinating, my first choice). In the mean time, we'll report back.

[snowangel]

AlexP, where in Minneapolis did you score fresh sardines?

[AlexP]

AlexP, where in Minneapolis did you score fresh sardines?

Hello Susan,

Sometime in the summer I found them at Coastal Seafoods on Minnehaha. I have not seen them again and I go there quite often. They came from Portugal. I do not remember how much I paid, but it was not too much. I was surprise of how good they were; just the smell really transported me back home.

Hope everything is going well.

Alex

[russ parsons]

i did a piece on the sardine fishery out of san pedro down here and also on cooking with fresh sardines.

i did find that it is best to bone them (you can do it with your fingers, the flesh is very soft. marinating them is nice but not necessary. one of the simplest preparations i found was from michael cimarusti at water grill: bone the sardines and open them out like a book. season lightly on both sides, then lightly sprinkle the skin side with bread crumbs. pat them so they stick. saute skin-side only in a very hot pan. the bread crumbs get crisp without being heavy and the fillets are so thin they cook through just from the one side. he serves it with a tomato-pepper sauce, like a ratatouille without the eggplant. i think they're great with salsa verde as well.

if you live in southern california, you can almost always find fresh sardines at japanese markets. under $1 a pound. ridiculously good food.

[torakris]

If looking for fresh sardines in the US, you might want to look at Asian markets as well.

Sardines are very popular in Japan and maybe under the name "iwashi"

EDIT:

I walk away from my computer for a couple minutes during posting and someone posts the same thing as me!

Edited February 5, 2004 by torakris (log)

[Mudpuppie]

Hey, uh, you don't live in San Diego, do you? Or work at a nuclear power plant?

Is this how you came into the fresh ones?

[Busboy]

The do have an unusual number of eyes.

[badthings]

Lulu Peyraud's recipe, as given by Richard Olney, is something like:

grill whole sardines over vine cuttings, then eat with your fingers. She doesn't even gut them.

That's a little hard core for me, so I usually filet, salt, fry briefly if I'm too lazy to grill.

[russ parsons]

i've got a japanese friend whose 100-year-old grandmother attributes her longevity to eating sardines un-gutted. i guess only the strong survive.

[Mayhaw Man]

Here is a sardine of the variety Busboy mentioned.

[Suzanne F]

You can easily butterfly and bone them to grill. If you grill them, serve them with a salad of bitter greens -- puntarelle if you can get it, otherwise standard frisee, endive, or chicory -- with a garlicky vinaigrette. Heaven!!

And if you don't grill them, well, what's the matter with you?????

[helenjp]

I like fresh sardines too.

Boning. One of the best descriptions I have read was in a Marcella Hazan book (just scanned my shelves and can't spot either of mine, not sure if it is in Marcella's Kitchen (I think it is though) or the Classic Italian Cooking (...if I have the title right).

I use sturdy kitchen scissors and my hands...cut head off (not strictly necessary, but), slit from vent to gills, discard guts and rinse fish quickly. Use hands to open fish right out, and put the butterflied fish on a board, skin side up, and run your hand firmly down the back, over the backbone. This is the key point! It loosens the bones. Then snap the backbone near the tail and head (if head is still attached). Gently "unzip) bones, pulling from head to tail. Use scissors to trim belly sides of the fish, or run the blade of a big knife under the fine bones at the belly, and trim off. Use scissors or knife to remove the dorsal fin if you want, and you're done. I usually toss them into salted water for about 20 minutes at this point -- think it sweetens the finished taste and firms them up a bit.

You can sprinkle them with pepper or herbs, curry powder or whole curry spices, grill with extra salt, or quickly flour one or both sides (cornstarch or a grainy wholewheat flour) and deep fry in whole or half fillets!

Enjoy!

[ludja]

Boning. One of the best descriptions I have read was in a Marcella Hazan book (just scanned my shelves and can't spot either of mine, not sure if it is in Marcella's Kitchen (I think it is though) or the Classic Italian Cooking (...if I have the title right).

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

[rlibkind]

Just used helenjp's boning technique, and it works like a charm.

I went the simplest route possible: oiled and broiled with salt and pepper. Yummy. One of the most pleasantly intense uncured fishes it has been my pleasure to consume. From now on I'm going to be on the lookout for them whenever they're in season (which is right now in the Northeast).

[HungryChris]

We went Framingham, Mass over the weekend and noticed a Whole Foods Market up the street from Trader Joe's. We decided to take a look around and I found some really beautiful fresh Sardines (abeit at $6.99 per lb). I cut the heads off, cleaned them, pulled the spines out with my fingers and rinsed them quickly under running water. I put on a dash of sea salt, some lemon juice and brushed them with evoo. Then I skewed them on little bamboo sticks soaked in water and briefly grilled them up turning just once. They were fantastic! It is hard to believe that a fish with such a strong aroma when being cleaned developes into such a delicacy on the grill. I think next time I'll just cut the heads off, clean them and take the bones out after grilling them whole.

HC

[bleudauvergne]

Hi Busboy, I would like to note that you should close your bedroom door, open the kitchen windows, fire up the hotte filter, and prepare at least one bottle of febreze for everything upholstered if you plan to cook your sardines in the house.

-Lucy

[_john]

I love fresh sardines. I often buy 4 medium sardines for about $1 and then decided what to do with them. One thing I love to do is use two small cast iron squares to grill the sardines on both sides at once. I butterfly the fish first. I heard Mario Batalli call this technique "a la plancha". They cook in about 30 seconds. I also eat them raw, or make meatballs, stew in miso and ginger, pan fry and put on pasta, and I make "bone crackers" from the spines. to make bone crackers I salt the bones and fry them, or salt them and let them dry and grill them dry on a stovetop fish grill.

Sometimes I need to prep a lot of sardines, what is the most efficient way to clean and debone them?

[Fugu]

It may seem strange to find fresh sardines in Switzerland but my memories of working in Geneva were the beach parties on Lac Leman. The sardines were just given a squeeze of lemon, sea salt and olive oil and grilled over coals. The fish were not cleaned, tasty but messy eatin'.

[gfron1]

I'm having 20# of fresh sardines flown in tomorrow. Thanks for the comments in this thread. I'll get some pics posted after tomorrow.