A Fear Overcome

When I first saw today’s recipe featured on Serious Eats, I was drawn to it.  The fact that it was described as “Clam chowder on spaghetti” totally sold me to the idea that I needed to try and make this dish.  But there was one tiny thing standing between me and that spaghetti.  Sardines.

I’ve never had these little fishies, at least to my knowledge.  In fact, my only experience with them is probably seeing Tom or Sylvester opening a tin and dining on the tiny fish al fresca.  Lately though, because they are pretty inexpensive, I’ve been seeing recipes calling for sardines popping up all over, and I decided I needed to try it.  Last night was the night. I pulled out the package of sardines and looked it over.  It just wasn’t very encouraging, I mean, the package said “two layer”, what the heck does that mean, I envisioned a double decker fish of some kind?  Well, I soon found out.

There were two layers of tiny, headless fish.  I looked in the tin and then wandered into the living room and took a gander at this sight.  They just weren’t all that different, in my opinion.

The smell when I opened the tin wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I immediately thought of cat food.  It wasn’t overwhelming though, very similar to a tin of tunafish.  My directions told me that I should drain these, bone them and chop them.  Bone them?  These were tiny, and a check online confirmed that sometimes sardines can be a little large, and then you obviously want the bones removed.

I grabbed one of the fish with my fingers and it started falling apart immediately, and I found that indeed, there was a bit of a spine in there.  I could have left them and chopped them up, because they really were minuscule, but I already was having doubts about these tiny fish, I decided I better remove any possibility of crunch.  So I picked up each sardine, pulled it apart with my fingers and removed the spines, it was really easy and didn’t take much time at all before I had a pile of crumbled sardines.

I ran through the sardines a few times with my knife, basically until it was a pile of mush, and then continued on with the recipe.  I made a few changes to the original, but stuck with the integrity of the recipe.  I’ll tell you honestly.  More than once, the theme of cat food just kept lingering at the forefront of my mind. With very few ingredients, the sauce itself was very easy to make, but it really didn’t look very appealing.  I took a few tentative tastes, added a whole lot of salt and pepper, and was surprised that I found the sauce quite tasty.  It had a hint of  a fishy taste- again, similar to tuna, yet somehow very different.  One thing was certain, Zander was not going to eat this.  So I quickly heated up some marinara for the kids, and tossed half the pasta in my sardine sauce, and the other half in the marinara.

Let me just say for the record that Andy and I were both very surprised with this dish.  With so few ingredients it was rich and complex and completely delightful to eat.  It’s a pasta sauce unlike any we’ve ever had before, and it really was delicious.  It was very decadent in mouthfeel, and unfortunately, because it was rich we didn’t quite eat as much of it as we would have liked.     I think that my additions to the sauce were important- namely the lemon juice and parsley.  It really needed some brightness, I think a splash of white wine would work as well.  And speaking of white wine, while we didn’t have any, this was one dish that literally screamed out for a glass of something crisp and fruity to cut the richness.   Overall, this one is a surprising two thumbs up, and is also being added to the budget friendly ideas.  A tin of sardines is ridiculously cheap, paired with onions, milk and pasta, this one comes out to less than a buck a plate for six servings.

Oh, and for the record, the description that drew me- the “clam chowder on spaghetti” was totally not correct.  This tastes nothing like clam chowder, but is still very delicious.  Now I’ll have to take care of a clam chowder craving by making the real deal.

Venetian Spaghetti with Sardines

adapted from Food & Wine Magazine

serves 6

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

One 4-ounce can or tin of olive-oil packed sardines drained, boned and finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 cup milk

1/4 cup freshly chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound spaghetti

Directions:

In a large, deep skillet, melt the butter with the olive oil over medium-low heat.  Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until softened and lightly golden- about 15 minutes.  Add the sardines and lemon juice and cook about 2 more minutes.  Add the milk and simmer for another 5 minutes, or until the sardines kind of melt into the sauce.   Add the parsley, salt and pepper as desired.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and add the spaghetti to the sauce in the skillet.  Toss to coat, seasoning with extra salt and pepper as desired. Serve immediately.