Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [161]
Those with strong digestions may enjoy sardine fritters. For obvious reasons, you should bone the fish and discard the heads, then you can marinade and pair them up before dipping them in batter. This kind of food needs to be eaten straight from the pan while the batter is crisp: plenty of bread and a glass of white wine is also a good idea.
For myself, I stick with sardines grilled simply. Or else dry-fried in a heavy non-stick pan: rub the surface over with kitchen paper dipped in a little oil, heat the pan and put in the sardines. When one side is brown and crusty, turn them over. This is next best to sardines grilled over charcoal.
SARDINE WARBLERS (Sarde a beccafico)
This is most savoury and appetizing dish from Palermo in Sicily. Its sweet-sour mixture of ingredients – pine kernels, sultanas, anchovies and lemon juice – echoes ancient and modern dishes from the Arab world. This isn’t surprising as Sicily belonged to the Saracens from the beginning of the ninth century until the end of the eleventh century, when the Normans arrived. Even then Muslim culture wasn’t wiped out, but continued to flourish under the benign influence of Roger II, King of Sicily. I like to think of tough Normans encountering the delights of sherbet and of dishes like this one, then taking the recipes back home to their families beyond the Alps. Such mixtures as this are the background to mincemeat and plum porridges, in which dried fruits were mixed sometimes with meat, sometimes with herrings. (One must admit that the hands of northern cooks were cruder and heavier in their enthusiastic gallimaufries.)
Beccafico is the Italian word for a warbler. It refers to the shape of the stuffed sardines, tucked side by side in the baking dish like a row of little birds.
The recipe, which can be used for other oily fish, or even slices of firm white fish (pile the stuffing on top), is adapted from Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking. Other versions substitute olives and capers for the anchovies.
Serves 6
1 kg (2¼ lb) sardines, split and boned
salt, pepper
olive oil
12 tablespoons soft white breadcrumbs
60 g (2 oz) sultanas
60 g (2 oz) pine kernels
6 salted anchovies, boned, soaked or 12 fillets tinned in oil, soaked
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons very finely chopped onion
1–2 lemons or oranges or 1 of each
3 bay leaves
Season the sardines with salt and pepper. Switch on the oven to gas 6, 200°C (400°F). Choose a gratin dish into which the sardines will fit in a single layer.
In a thin layer of oil, brown 9 tablespoons of breadcrumbs lightly, then mix them with sultanas and pine kernels. Pound or chop anchovies, and add them to the breadcrumb mixture with plenty of pepper, the parsley and onion. The original recipe added sugar at this point, about a teaspoon, but I don’t think it is necessary, especially if you are using orange juice. An addition I sometimes make is a little finely grated zest from the lemon.
Put some stuffing on to each sardine and roll it from the wide end so that eventually the tail sticks up. Brush the baking dish lightly with oil, put in any stuffing left over and place the rolls in it, close together. Tear the bay leaves into pieces, sprinkle them over the top with the remaining breadcrumbs. Spray them with a little oil, or sprinkle it on.
Bake for 15 minutes, then check on the sardines which should be cooked and the crumbs which should be browned. Pour lemon or lemon and orange juice over the dish immediately before serving it. Or else serve the dish with the citrus fruit cut into wedges.
STARGAZY PIE
The quaint name is a puzzle. The small sail at the top