Sardines with tomatoes, olives, celery and leek

This dish, like my last similar recipe, is inspired by Mediterranean cooking in Sicily, Calabria (and Greece). Magna Graecia indeed! This time the recipe uses mammoth green olives which I was given as a present, a leek I needed to cook and the fish component was comprised of fresh filleted sardines. This week’s heat delayed my cooking but now that the cool has come (along with rain, thunder, lightning and hail) I can get on with it. I doubled the tomatoes in this recipe as the addition of the leek required this.  While cooking I also added gradually about a cup of water to keep the consistency as I wanted it.

Last time I cooked the earlier variant of the recipe I said I felt like I was in Greece. My friend Letizia said she felt she was in her homeland when she read the recipe. What will she think this time? Despite the green olives I still feel that I am in Greece (or Magna Graecia) and indeed wonder if I will ever get to Sicily or even Greece again.  

Ingredients

Olive oil

2 stalks celery including leaves

1 leek

3 cloves garlic crushed

2 cans (400 gr) diced tomatoes

10 mammoth green olives

3-4 tbs chopped fresh basil

1 tbs capers

400 gr fresh filleted sardines

1 cup water

Mode

Heat the oil in a pan large enough to simmer all the ingredients

Chop the celery

Finely slice leek

Crush the garlic

Lightly fry the garlic, celery and leek

Add the tomatoes and olives and stir occasionally

Chop basil and add it and capers

Turn down heat and simmer for about 5 minutes

While cooking add water as needed for consistency

Add the sardines and stir to cover the fish

Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes

Sardines with lemon

And with the rest of the sardines, I cooked them with lemon, breadcrumbs and pinenuts. They are to be eaten another night or even frozen and enjoyed even later as I know from previous experience.

Ingredients 

1 lemon

25gr pinenuts

Breadcrumbs 

20 fresh filletted sardines

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

Juice the  lemon

Arrange the sardines in an ovenproof dish

Sprinkle breadcrumbs over

Add the lemon juice

Sprinkle over the pinenuts

Bake in 180c oven for 30 minutes

Sardines pizza

Sardines!! Yum!! I have never made a pizza with fresh filleted sardines before (or any sardines for that matter). So Sunday night pizza friends this is one to have and repeat. I love sardines and this combination is delicious - πολύ νόστιμο! 

Ingredients

1 Wattle Valley wholemeal wrap

Sun dried tomato pesto

Ricotta

12 fresh filleted sardines 

6 black olives

Pinenuts

Mode

Preheat oven to 220c

Spread pesto on wholemeal wrap

Spoon on ricotta and spread evenly

Place sardines over pesto and cheese

Chop olives and sprinkle in middle

Sprinkle pinenuts over

Bake in 220c oven for 12 minutes

Enjoy on a Sunday (or any time). 

Baked sardines with orange and lemon

Ah! The second half of my birthday sardines was cooked differently a day or so later. A friend thought from a photo of them that the olive oil was lemon juice, so this time I added lemon and orange juice and used cumin seeds instead of sumac. I ate this lot with potato and sweet potato baked with garlic, rosemary and olive oil.  It wasn’t my birthday dinner but another delicious meal in Melbourne’s latest lockdown.

Ingredients

16 filleted sardines

1/2 lemon

1/2 orange

1 clove garlic

2 tsp cumin seeds

Olive oil

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

Arrange sardines in baking dish

Crush garlic and add to sardines

Sprinkle over cumin seeds

Add olive oil

Squeeze orange and lemon and add to dish

Bake in 180c oven for 20 mins

Baked sardines with sumac

Well it was my birthday and for the second year in a row I was in lockdown and had to cancel my previously arranged dinner out with friends. So I had a lovely Zoom meeting with interstate friends (originally planned as pre-dinner event) and then wondered what to cook. Would it be fresh sardines or fresh tuna? This is what I went for on my birthday. I ate the sardines with potatoes roasted with olive oil, rosemary and whole garlic cloves. 

Ingredients 

16 filleted sardines

1 tsp sumac

1 clove garlic

Olive oil

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

Arrange sardines in baking dish

Sprinkle sumac over

Crush garlic and add

Sprinkle with olive oil

Bake in oven for 20 minutes

Sardines St Clements

Yesterday coming out of the fog and lack of appetite from AstraZeneca I had a delicious lunch of chilli sardines with orange and rocket salad. What a lovely way to get my appetite back and no wonder I was excited to find fresh filleted sardines on sale today!  

This is not really like the whole sardines I had yesterday but a variant of a recipe I found years ago in a book by Lorenza de Medici. The name is from the combination of lemon and orange in my recipe. I used ready-made breadcrumbs with lemon, pepper and parsley but you could use whatever you have. I ate mine with rocket and some potatoes I had previously roasted. Delicious! 

Ingredients 

1/2 orange

1/2 lemon

25gr pinenuts

1 tsp Sambal oelek

Breadcrumbs 

500 gr filletted sardines

Mode

Preheat oven to 160c

Juice the orange and lemon

Arrange the sardines in an ovenproof dish

Sprinkle breadcrumbs over

Add the orange and lemon juice

Sprinkle over the pinenuts and Sambal oelek

Bake in 160c oven for 40 minutes

Sardines in orange

Fresh sardines at Piedimonte’s? Yes please! In these days of being hunkered down at home it was great to see some sardines. And an orange (though why have them from overseas rather than Australia I don’t know), breadcrumbs and mixed peel! A meal fit for the goddesses and delicious it was.

Ingredients

500 gr sardines (filletted and spread flat)

Bread crumbs (seasoned and with Parmesan)

1 orange

1 tbs mixed peel

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

Place the sardines in ovenproof dish in whatever layout pleases you

Sprinkle with breadcrumbs

Juice the orange

Pour over the sardines and breadcrumbs

Sprinkle on top the mixed peel

Cook at 180c for 30 minutes

Serve with crisp green salad

Baked sardines

Recently I unexpectedly found some fresh, filleted sardines at Piedimonte’s. I realized that it was years since I last cooked my favourite sardines recipe with orange juice and pinenuts. In fact, I had not cooked sardines since my favourite fishmonger closed its doors. 

But once I was home and ready to cook, disaster! I couldn’t find any pinenuts and the orange I was going to juice was past its prime to say the least. But there is always a way! The orange quickly turned into lemon and the pinenuts to mixed peel and dried grapes. And voilà! The sardines were delicious and will be made again.

Ingredients

500 gr sardines (filletted and spread flat)

Bread crumbs (seasoned and with Parmesan)

1 lemon

1 tbs mixed peel

Handful dried grapes

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

Place the sardines in ovenproof dish in whatever layout pleases you

Sprinkle with breadcrumbs

Juice the lemon

Pour over the sardines and breadcrumbs

Sprinkle on top the mixed peel and dried grapes

Cook at 180c for 20 minutes

Serve with crisp green salad

Lime sardines - grilled or baked!

The sardines, derivative of Lorenza di Medici, were delicious yesterday, but what will I do with the rest of the sardines? I had a look at a few recipes, mainly in Greek books, and then went back to my bible for ideas, Stephanie. I don't think I have cooked many of her recipes, but I love her this goes with that column under each of the topics and often pull the book down for inspiration.

Finally I decided that I would marinate the sardines this afternoon and then grill them this evening. I thought about various combinations from Stephanie but then decided to focus my marinade on the limes that I had on hand. Sardines are oily and strong flavoured and need something to balance that. Lime juice should do the trick and I really like lime juice. I finally settled on a combination of lime juice, olive oil, ginger, garlic, coriander and Sambal oelek (hot chilli paste).

Of course, the first trick was to secure the kitchen from the cats who were going berserk about the sardines yesterday ;>) and still aware of something very interesting in the fridge. Stephanie suggests always cooking sardines outside because of next day's smell, but I don't have a barbecue so I shall have to bear the consequences, I thought as I prepared the marinade. Then as I was putting the bowl with the sardines and the marinade into the refrigerator, I had an idea. These would be delicious baked in this marinade with potatoes. So I'll offer two variants for this recipe. And to obviate the need for grill cleaning and a sardine-smelling kitchen, I'll make the baked variant tonight.



Lime sardines

12 sardines (cleaned, headed, and butterflied)
Juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon Sambal Oelek
1 teaspoon crushed ginger root
2 cloves garlic crushed
Chopped coriander to taste
Two potatoes (for option 2)

Mix together all the marinade ingredients. Place the sardines in a bowl. Pour over the marinade. Allow to rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

For grilled lime sardines:
Heat the grill until it is very hot. Place the sardines on the grill skin side up. Brush with the marinade. These should be cooked in about two minutes. Serve with green salad and olive bread. Serves two for a main meal, or can be served as part of antipasto.

For baked lime sardines:
Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Peel and chop each of the potatoes into about eight pieces and add to the lime and sardine mixture. Bake for 80-90 minutes until the potatoes are tender and have absorbed the lime mixture. If you partially pre-cook the potatoes, you could speed up the process but the long cooking allows all the flavours to permeate beautifully. Serve with green salad. Serves two for a main meal.

Saturday Treats from Canals!

I am not by nature an early riser but one of the the things that I like to do to pamper myself on a Saturday morning is roll out of bed and head off to do shopping at Piedimonte's. This means that I can bring home a freshly baked almond croissant for breakfast. Sometimes I go slightly further afield to Canals in Nicholson St, the best fish shop in Melbourne.

Today I had a craving to cook a sardine recipe based on one by Lorenza di Medici but I wasn’t sure whether sardines were around. It was very cold and raining but I got myself out of bed and to Piedimonte’s, and thence to Canals. And guess what was in the Canals window? Filleted and flattened sardines just like I wanted! I was also tempted by the Pacific oysters and cooked prawns as I waited my turn. So I went away satisfied!

After I dropped off flowers to a friend for her birthday and devoured the almond croissant, housework and fighting with my modem intervened. Lunch was my reward (even though there was plenty more housework and I still couldn’t get a connection on the modem): Philippa’s luscious green olive bread with the oysters and prawns and lime juice. I normally use lemon but had been given some limes. The lime juice added a great touch, as I fought off the kokkinaki from the seafood. The greedy aspraki was asleep near the heater and missed the battle.

And the sardines? I wanted to cook an old favourite which involves baking the sardines with breadcrumbs, oil, orange juice, pinenuts and currants. There were a couple of obstacles. First, the pottery dish I have always used had cracked and was unusable for baking. Second, I couldn’t find the Lorenza di Medici recipe book anywhere amongst my cookbooks. I didn’t need the recipe book to cook the sardines but, so that I could discuss it here, I wanted to see what her recipe involved as opposed to mine which I know I have varied from Lorenza’s. Finding another dish proved less of an obstacle than finding Lorenza di Medici’s The Renaissance of Italian cooking which remains mislaid.

Hmm! After a good start my Saturday was not going well: broken dish, lost cook book, no internet connection and an overwhelming amount of housework. Use another dish, just cite the recipe book as a source, start inputting my blog post in Word for uploading later (@#$% internet connection), and do more housework (or put on my raincoat and go for a walk in the beautiful rain).

Things didn't get better. The modem was on its last legs so I dashed out to buy a replacement and still the washing wasn't done! And when I started cooking the sardines the quantities were not quite right for the dish I was using and required a bit of playing with quantities. However, the final product was delicious and well worth the effort. And the new modem is still working and the first load of washing is completed!

Baked Sardines with breadcrumbs and orange juice

12 sardines (headed, filleted and flattened)
3 heaped tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
1 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon currants
1 tablespoon pinenuts
Olive oil

Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees. Place the sardines in a circular arrangement in a round dish that is suitable for oven to table use. Sprinkle the currants over. Add breadcrumbs. Pour on orange juice to cover and dash with olive oil. Toss pinenuts on top. Place in the middle of the oven and cook for 30 minutes.

Serves four as an entree and two as a main meal. For a main meal serve with salad or vegetables.