Omnomnivorous
Dec. 14th, 2011 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
For some reason, I've been on a sardine-buying kick for the past few months, but not so much with the sardine-eating since the end of summer. I mean, I'm perfectly happy in hot weather to peel open a can and eat it plain, but cold weather seems to call for something more substantial. I kept thinking about combining them with noodles in some way, but something else still seemed to be needed.
While looking for sardine recipes, I came across some mentions of Alton Brown's sardine'n'avocado sandwich, which seems to be amenable to all sorts of minor ingredient modifications (and incidentlly, is ascribed a major role in his comfortably shedding 50 lbs). I'm not a big fan of avocados, but I figured I'd give it a try. (Recipe tweak below.)
Wow. It's tasty and intense (like a tuna salad turned up to eleven) and very very filling. And reasonably cheap, depending on your ingredient choices/sourcing. One small sandwich, made with a Trader Joe's michelette roll, was quite sufficient for lunch, and there's definitely enough left of the sardine/avocado mix to make another sandwich for dinner. Though on the way back from TJ's, I aslo stopped by Safeway to hit the ATM and they had chicken on sale, so there's also 5 lbs of chicken thighs waiting to be baked for dinner and later application toward pot pie or soup or whatnot. And I've also creamed together enough butter and sugar for the seasonal batch of the wombat-consort's ancestral orange cookies, which I'll finish mixing up after the chicken is baked.
Hmm. Perhaps I should remember to eat breakfast before making food production plans.
Anyway, my modified sardine/avocado stuff follows the cut.
As I said, I'm not fond of avocados and so I don't know how to choose ripe ones; the original recipe says to "mash" the avocado, but this one was unmashable and I ended up roughly chopping it into salsa-sized chunks. Whatever. (It occurs to me that perhaps this could be expedited by starting with pre-mashed avocado or even guacamole, as long as it's real guacamole and not that distressing green-tinted hydrogenated vegetable oil with no actual avocado content. But the chunky texture worked out for me.)
Yield: 2 sandwiches
Ingredients--
1 can sardines in oil
1/4 salt-preserved lemon plus a bit of lemon brine if needed
1/2 avocado
fresh-ground pepper
2 crusty rolls
Slice rolls in half and toast them. (If only making one sandwich at a time, just slice/toast one roll.)
Pour entire can of sardines into a bowl. Spoon out some of the oil onto the cut surfaces of the toasted roll(s), letting it sink in.
Mince one quarter of a preserved lemon, add to sardines with fresh-ground pepper, and mash to break up the fish. Check for texture/taste. I ended up adding ~1T lemon brine because the initial mix was a.) a bit dry, probably from spooning out too much of the sardine oil, and b.) not quite salty enough, probably from rinsing brine off the preserved lemon before chopping. (I still have huge extra quantities of lemon brine from Adventures in Salt-Preserving Lemons this past summer. It's a great addition to soup. The chicken thighs are part of a vague plan to test a semi-instant soup concept involving a can of coconut milk, a box of chicken broth, and some of the lime brine from my initial small citrus-preserving batch.)
Scoop out one avocado half into a different bowl. If mashable, spread it onto one half of the roll. If not, chop it into bits, add to the sardine/lemon bowl, and re-mix before finishing sandwich assembly.
Eat while warding off cats from licking spilled drops of sardine oil off your plate.
While looking for sardine recipes, I came across some mentions of Alton Brown's sardine'n'avocado sandwich, which seems to be amenable to all sorts of minor ingredient modifications (and incidentlly, is ascribed a major role in his comfortably shedding 50 lbs). I'm not a big fan of avocados, but I figured I'd give it a try. (Recipe tweak below.)
Wow. It's tasty and intense (like a tuna salad turned up to eleven) and very very filling. And reasonably cheap, depending on your ingredient choices/sourcing. One small sandwich, made with a Trader Joe's michelette roll, was quite sufficient for lunch, and there's definitely enough left of the sardine/avocado mix to make another sandwich for dinner. Though on the way back from TJ's, I aslo stopped by Safeway to hit the ATM and they had chicken on sale, so there's also 5 lbs of chicken thighs waiting to be baked for dinner and later application toward pot pie or soup or whatnot. And I've also creamed together enough butter and sugar for the seasonal batch of the wombat-consort's ancestral orange cookies, which I'll finish mixing up after the chicken is baked.
Hmm. Perhaps I should remember to eat breakfast before making food production plans.
Anyway, my modified sardine/avocado stuff follows the cut.
As I said, I'm not fond of avocados and so I don't know how to choose ripe ones; the original recipe says to "mash" the avocado, but this one was unmashable and I ended up roughly chopping it into salsa-sized chunks. Whatever. (It occurs to me that perhaps this could be expedited by starting with pre-mashed avocado or even guacamole, as long as it's real guacamole and not that distressing green-tinted hydrogenated vegetable oil with no actual avocado content. But the chunky texture worked out for me.)
Yield: 2 sandwiches
Ingredients--
1 can sardines in oil
1/4 salt-preserved lemon plus a bit of lemon brine if needed
1/2 avocado
fresh-ground pepper
2 crusty rolls
Slice rolls in half and toast them. (If only making one sandwich at a time, just slice/toast one roll.)
Pour entire can of sardines into a bowl. Spoon out some of the oil onto the cut surfaces of the toasted roll(s), letting it sink in.
Mince one quarter of a preserved lemon, add to sardines with fresh-ground pepper, and mash to break up the fish. Check for texture/taste. I ended up adding ~1T lemon brine because the initial mix was a.) a bit dry, probably from spooning out too much of the sardine oil, and b.) not quite salty enough, probably from rinsing brine off the preserved lemon before chopping. (I still have huge extra quantities of lemon brine from Adventures in Salt-Preserving Lemons this past summer. It's a great addition to soup. The chicken thighs are part of a vague plan to test a semi-instant soup concept involving a can of coconut milk, a box of chicken broth, and some of the lime brine from my initial small citrus-preserving batch.)
Scoop out one avocado half into a different bowl. If mashable, spread it onto one half of the roll. If not, chop it into bits, add to the sardine/lemon bowl, and re-mix before finishing sandwich assembly.
Eat while warding off cats from licking spilled drops of sardine oil off your plate.