Anchovies that anchovy haters love

So many people say they hate anchovies. I used to say it too. The same goes for sardines. I used to shudder watching my father dig them out of a flat tin and joyfully munch them down on toast. Then I started traveling to Italy and I discovered that I do not hate anchovies or sardines, I just hate eating tinned ones. I can cook with them and get fabulous dishes, but for the most part I do not want to meet them alone in the dark.

Fresh ones are a completely different thing. In Italy they are called pesce azzuro, or blue fish, which category food experts have declared for all the cheap fish that have a lot of omega 3 in them. They plead with us to choose these fish first for many reasons. They are also very much overlooked and underappreciated in the United States to the point of being hard to find except in ethnic markets. And yet, the first time I ate a fried anchovy I lost my heart to the little thing. I was at a beach house and the host had ordered a fritto misto carry out from a nearby restaurant. I secretly thought I could eat just the shrimp. Then I accidently bit into a tiny fish and the earth moved. I know I have used a lot of romantic imagery in this paragraph, but I have a lot of it in my head and at my age one mostly gets to apply it to food.

These ones you see were cooked as part of an extended lunch antipasto in Ostuni, Puglia. They were incredibly fresh, bright-eyed, shiny. I wouldn’t buy them if they were any other way. Many cook them just as they come, but I like to behead them and remove the innards, of which there is very little. Just running your finger along the side of the fish removes it. Wash under running water, then lay on paper towels. They will cook in minutes. Almost anything I say about anchovies/aciugi/alici I can also say abouyt sardines/sardi, but being a bit bigger they will take a bit longer to cook.

Fried Anchovies or Sardines

buy about 8 ounces or 250g of fish per person: this recipe will handle 16 ounces/500 g

1 egg
a few spoonsful of milk
1 cup or 130 g plain flour salted and peppered
good olive oil
lemon quarters optional

First flour the fish, then drop them in the egg wash then dredge them once more in the flour mixture.

Heat a generous amount of oil in a frying pam. It should be between 1/8 and 1/4 inch deep, or .5 to 1 cm. When the oil is moking, lay the fish in it and fry a few minutes, then turn and fry the other side. They will cook through in moments, and in the case of anchovies, the bones will disappear. Remove them as they are done to paper towels to drain them. Serve with lemon if you like. As you can see I did, but I actually never use lemon on them, because they have such a perfect nutty taste that I don’t want to alter it at all.

If you find sardines instead of anchovies, they can be split and cooked butterflied, or if not it’s nice to open them after cooking and gently remove the spine, carrying wth it most of the bones. There are lots of things you can do with these two small fish, but this way of cooking them seems to be universally a favorite.