DORIE GREENSPAN

The Last Word (for now) on Sardines - Russ Parsons Has It

After writing about my experience filetting sardines and using them to make an escabeche, I got an email from my friend Russ Parsons, food and wine writer for the Los Angeles Times, and the author of How To Pick a Peach (a fascinating read).

Russ is a certified fan of sardines and, when writing about them for the Times, described his way of dealing with the bones:

The flesh of the sardine is so tender and soft that you could probably do all of the cleaning using a butter knife. But in the interest of time and a neater piece of fish, you'll probably want to use a paring knife.

 

Still, there's not much to it. Begin by laying the fish on a board and making a small cut on the dorsal side right behind the head and straight down through the backbone. Make another incision on the belly side just behind the front fins. Holding the fish under running water, gently twist the head from the body. If you do this right, most of the innards will come away with the head. Discard these.

 

Using the same small knife, cut a slit the length of the belly and rinse out the inside. Lay the fish on its back on the cutting board and make two shallow parallel cuts the length of the backbone. You'll want to be careful not to cut all the way through the meat.

 

With your thumb and forefinger, grasp the exposed backbone near the tail and pull up, using the fingers of your other hand to hold the meat in place. The backbone and larger ribs should lift cleanly away, leaving you a neatly butterflied fish.

 

Finish the preparation by scraping away the black skin along the ribs and cutting away the rib endings on either side. There will still be some bones left, but these will be so fine they won't be a problem. Do check to make sure all of the bones around the collar of the fish are gone.

 

And then Russ sent along his recipe for Sarde in Saor, the classic Venetian sweet-sour dish that's related to escabeche.  Russ says that the raisins and pinenuts are optional, that the way to eat it is on a slice of toast and that the traditional Venetian accompaniment would be a glass of a less Verdicchio.  Mille grazie, Russ.

 

 

SARDE IN SAOR

From Russ Parsons and The Los Angeles Times

 

Makes 4 to 6 servings

 

Oil

2 pounds sardines, cleaned

Flour

Salt

2 pounds onions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup olive oil

3/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/4 cup white wine

1 bay leaf

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup toasted pinenuts

 

Heat 1/4 to 1/2 inch of oil in a large heavy skillet until it is hot enough that food sizzles when added to it. Lightly flour the sardines on both sides and fry in the hot oil until lightly browned, less than a minute per side. Using a slotted spatula, lift the sardines from the oil and drain on paper towels. Season with salt.

 

Drain the oil from the skillet, but don’t wipe it clean. Combine the onions and the olive oil in the skillet and cook over very low heat until the onions are very soft and just beginning to turn golden (not brown). This can take as long as an hour. Stir the onions from time to time, scraping the bottom of the pan to release any browned bits of sardine that are stuck there.

 

When the onions are soft and sweet, add the vinegar, white wine and bay leaf and increase the heat to medium. Cook until the liquid has reduced to a glaze. When you tip the pan to the side, there should be only a couple of tablespoons of liquid left. Remove the pan from the heat, discard the bay leaf, and stir in the raisins and pinenuts.

 

Arrange 1 layer of sardines in the bottom of a small baking dish. Cover it with a thin layer of onions. Repeat with the remaining sardines and onions, pouring any liquid that’s left in the pan over top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 days before serving.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

It's not that I have sardines on the brain or anything, but I came across the following line last night in a French food magazine:

Little children love sardine beignets sprinkled with some fleur-de-sel.

I don't know what it's like at your house, but had I handed our kid a fried sardine puff -- with or without ritzy salt -- I don't think I'd have been greeted with a grin.

Ah, those lucky French tots.  I love the thought that little ones might go from pureed peas and carrots directly to sardine beignets without stopping at Cheerios or peanut-butter sandwiches.  Of course, French children never get peanut-butter because their parents are convinced it's the root of all obesity. (I'm exaggerating only a smidgen.)  But that's a different story..

Give A Man A Fish ...

On my way home from the Marche Saint Germain this morning, I kept thinking of the Chinese proverb:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I'd just bought a kilo (about 2 1/4 pounds) of sardines and I'd hoped that madame, the fishmonger, would filet them for me.  And she would have -- if I'd only wait 30 minutes, please.  Because it was a warm, sunny, perfect Paris day, and because I'd no more shopping to do to fill in the time, I said I'd filet them myself.  Madame gave me a quizzical look -- read doubtful -- and, because she was too polite to say, "I bet you've never done this before and don't know what you're in for," she said, "You know, you've got a lot of sardines and it will take you a while to filet them."

"Well," I said, "I really do have to get back home, so I'll take them as is.  But," I asked, "would you just show me how to do it?"

Madame pulled out a well-worn fileting knife -- very thin at the top and not so wide at the bottom -- laid the fish out parallel to her with the head to the left, made a diagonal slash below the gills, then pressing the flat of the knife against the backbone and rib bones (they're probably not called that, but the names make sense to me), she cut cleanly to the tail and lifted the filet away from the fish.  She flipped the fish over, still keeping the head to the left, and repeated the motion.  The skeleton that was left wasn't as neatly picked clean as the one Picasso made famous, but the remains looked clean and symetrical and she'd done it in 30 seconds.

Returning chez moi, I cleared the decks, sharpened a paring knife and put on some music.  I had 12 sardines and figured that had madame cleaned them, it would only have taken her 6 minutes.  I probably could have waited, but I'm glad I didn't because it only took me half an hour, I did a pretty decent job of it, and I learned something.  Not bad for a Sunday morning.

I also got to turn the filets into escabeche, a dish in which the sardines are first quickly sauteed and only partially cooked, and then drowned in hot aromatic oil and vinegar, a mixture that completes the cooking and pickles them, too. 

The downside of escabeche is the wait -- once the dish is assembled, it needs at least 6 hours in the fridge to cure.  Had I remembered that I'd have to hang for so long before tasting the my work, I might have found the patience to wait 6 minutes for the fish to be fileted.  Of course, what I would have made up in time, I'd have to forfait in bragging rights.

Here's a recipe for SARDINE ESCABECHE from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook (Daniel Boulud and Dorie Greenspan, Scribner's)

Makes 6 servings

1 1/4 cups extra-virgin olive oil

Flour for dredging

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

1 1/4 pounds sardine filets, skin on (from about 2 1/2 pounds whole sardines)

2 sprigs thyme

2 sprigs cilantro

2 sprigs basil

1 tomato, peeled, trimmed and thinly sliced crosswise

6 pearl onions, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced crosswise

3 cloves garlic, peeled, split, germ removed, and thinly sliced

2 small carrots, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced

2 stalks celery, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced

18 fennel seeds, toasted

18 coriander seeds, toasted

2 bay leaves

Pinch of red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon ketchup

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 cup white vinegar

Juice of 2 lemons

Lemon wedges for serving

Pour 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into a large nonstick saute pan or skillet and warm it over medium heat.  Spread some flour out on a plate, season it with salt and pepper, and dredge only the skin sides of the sardines in the flour, shaking off the excess.  Slip the fish into the pan, flour side down, and fry on the flour side for 1 1/2 minutes - the fish will be undercooked, but it will finish cooking in the marinade.  Lift the fish out of the pan and pat off the excess oil; discard the frying oil, wipe out the pan and set it aside.

Arrange the sardine filets attractively in an overlapping pattern on a rimmed serving platter or in an oval gratin pan that holds them snugly.  Strew the thyme, coriander, basil and diced tomato over the fish and set the platter aside for the moment.

Return the pan to medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil.  When the oil is hot, toss in the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, fennel and coriander seeds, and bay leaves to cook, stirring, until the vegetables are almost cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes.  Add the remaining 1 cup olive oil and all the other remaining ingredients, except the lemon juice and wedges, to the pan, bring to the simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.  Pull the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Pour the hot sauce over the fish.  Cover the platter with plastic wrap and allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.  Chill the escabeche for at least 6 hours, or overnight, before serving.

To serve:  Serve the escabeche with lemon wedges on the side.  If you'd like, you can drain off some of the marinating liquid, emulsify it in the blender, and use it as the dressing for an accompanying green salad.

Chateau de Cande and the Would-be Monarchs

I've been traveling through the Loire Valley with Maison de la France and have not had much internet access, so I've got a pile-up of things to share -- now all I've got to do is find the time...

For starters, there's my visit to the Chateau de Cande, where Edward, Prince of Wales, and Wallis Simpson, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, were married on June 3, 1937.  Here, on the walls of the chateau's library, are the Windsors' signatures and their wedding date, carved with a rotograveur.

And here's the menu for what might have been a storybook wedding, but which turned out to be the start of a life in exile:

• Jambon d'York
• Langouste
• Foie Gras
• Caviar
• Salade Russe
• Navarin aux Legumes (lamb stew with vegetables)
• Fricasse de poulard et poulet (fricasse of young hen and chicken)
• Patisseries
• Fruits refraichis (cold fruit)

All set out as a buffet in the chateau's dining room

The Man-Who-Would-Be-King, Edward, who abdicated the throne of England for the woman he loved, married Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American socialite at Cande, the home of their friends, Charles and Fern Bedaux, in the heart of the Loire Valley, far from either England or America, and, as it turned out, far from most of the important people in their lives.

While the couple invited 300 people to their wedding, only 16 showed up and, even in the fabulous wedding portraits by Cecile Beaton, the couple don't look so cheerful.

The sad and fascinating story of the Windsors has been written about endlessly, but it's not a story that ever interested me enough to follow it -- it's not easy for me to be interested in two extraordinarily privileged, but profoundly selfish people.  Yet, after the tour of Cande, all I wanted was a comfy couch, a mound of bonbons (or M&Ms) and a stack of Windsor biographies.

Cande is unique among the famous chateaux of the Loire because it's not as grand as the others -- it would be easy to settle into the library for an afternoon catnap -- and it wasn't built (or even visited) by a king, as so many of the chateaux in the valley were.  But it was home to the Windsors for months before their marriage and there's plenty of Windsorbilia to see.

The photos of the Windsors are extraordinary, particularly the famous picture by Philippe Halsman, which was part of his series called Jumpology.  Halsman's theory was that a person's true personality was revealed in his face during the act of jumping, the idea being that you drop your "mask" when you have to concentrate on thrusting yourself in the air and landing safely.

Here are the Duke and Duchess of Windsor caught mid-air, she looking happier than she appeared to be by all reports, and he looking terrified, as though he knew what a sad future he'd consigned himself to.

The Halsman photographs are remarkable and, even though it's totally unrelated, I can't resist showing you the picture he took of a jumping Marilyn Monroe for the cover of Life Magazine

All tours of Chateau de Cande are guided and our guide had a touching understanding -- an affection, even -- for the Windsors.  For any royal-watchers, the tour is a peek into a part of the family the Queen would probably like to forget; for anyone interested in fashion, the tour is a treat.

Wallis Simpson, credited with popularizing the phrase, "A woman can never be too rich or too thin," spent her riches clothing her thin body, and there's a small, but wonderful, selection from her wardrobe at the Chateau.  Her panther jewels from Cartier, her painted luggage, some of the elegant gowns made for her by Schiarparelli and Dior, and this ensemble

a very early design by a very young designer, Karl Lagerfeld, now the man responsible for Chanel.

Wallis may have lacked many qualities, but she sure had a good eye.

 

Recycling the Empties in Paris and New York

Last night I had a dinner party with lots of wine, as you can see, and this morning I had to toss the empties into the recycling bin, located in the courtyard in full view of all of my Parisian neighbors.

There isn't a time when I do this that it doesn't make me think of differing attitudes (or at least what I perceive of as differing attitudes) between my French and American neighbors.

In our New York apartment, the recycling bin is in a common back hallway.  Whenever I toss a bunch of bottles into the bin, I have the same thought:  "What will the neighbors think when they see soooooooo many bottles."  

In Paris, as each bottle crashes to the bottom of the bin and breaks, I imagine my neighbors looking out of their windows, seeing me, l'americaine, and saying: "Bravo!  She's getting the hang of life here."

Bloggers Who Lunch

I had a great lunch at Racines, 8 Passage des Panoramas (Paris 2; 01-40-13-06-41), a wine bar with exceptional food/ a bistro with exceptional wine, and I had it with great people, the bloggers, Meg Zimbeck and David Lebovitz. And at some point during the lunch, I had to giggle -- and snap a picture

 

As soon as we bloggers sit down, we pull out our cameras the way the generations before us pulled out their packs of Lucky Strikes.  And the instant the dishes are set down, it's click, click, click.  It's incredibly amusing and so interesting to see how each person gets a different shot.

And speaking of different shots, Meg and David got much, much better pictures than I did, so to see the salad of thinly shaved vegetables from Michelin-3-star-chef Alain Passard's garden, the hand-cut steak tartare (so good), the meltingly tender braised pork cheeks or the perfectly cooked pasta, you'll have to visit them.

Oh, and when you do, you'll also learn more about the talented, charming -- and very good-looking -- Pierre Jancou, Racine's chef/owner/wine ace.

Paris Sweet: La Palette's Strawberry Tarte

I'm in Paris now and each time I pass the cafe La Palette or stop in to have a coffee, I think of the time, several years ago, when my husband, Michael, and I had lunch there under the trees and finished with the simplest tart imaginable.  La Palette's strawberry tart was nothing more than a cookie crust, brushed with strawberry jam, topped generously with strawberries and served with a little pottery bowl of thick creme fraiche. 

At La Palette, I think what they do is bake the tart and leave it unfilled.  When an order for tart comes in, they cut a wedge of the crust, give it a gloss of jam and spoon over the cut berries.  It's a brilliant way to keep the crust crisp in a cafe and it works just as brilliantly at home.  Because you don't assemble the tart pieces until you're ready to serve them, you don't risk having the crisp crust go soggy.

This week, the bakers at Tuesdays with Dorie made the La Palette Tart from Baking From My Home to Yours,  so you can see almost 200 versions of it on members' blogs.  Here's what it looked like when I had it at La Palette the first time

La Palette is at 43 rue de Seine, in the 6 th arrondissement.

French Women Don't Get Fat: 3 Reasons Why

It's true -- French women are thinner than we Americans.  And while I'm sure there are lots of reasons for it (I like to think it's genetic, because if it is, there's not much we can do about it), I think I found three of them yesterday.

One: They eat less than we do.

Several years ago, I read that a study comparing portion sizes in France and America showed that the portions in the States were one-third larger (and often a lot more than that) than those in France and last night was proof of it:  I told the butcher I wanted a steak for one and you can see what I got, a lovely little (emphasis on little) filet that barely tipped the scale at 100 grams, or about 3 1/2 ounces.  And, you know what?  It was enough!  (And pretty delicious, too, topped with shallots cooked in the pan while the steak was resting and red wine splashed into the pan and reduced at the end.)

 

Two: Big Brother is watching them.

It's not just alcohol and tobacco that carry dire warnings (to see SMOKING KILLS in big, block letters on a cigarette pack is jarring in the extreme), it's bread and sugar, too. 

This is from a sign hanging over the bread baskets at my local Monoprix.  The gentle warning reads: For your health, avoid snacking between meals and sends readers (and snackers) to a government-sponsored website called eat/move.  The site's handiwork turned up yesterday afternoon at the bottom of a magazine recipe for Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote with Vanilla Whipped Cream.  The recipe was part of an advertisement for brown sugar and this time the warning read: For your health, avoid eating too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt.

 

Three: They sublimate.

Instead of walking into Laduree and buying one of every macaron they've got, or going for a religieuse -- two pastry-cream-filled cream puffs, shiny with glaze and finished with a white icing ringlet that resembles a cleric's collar -- they opt for something beautiful and completely sans calories: this religieuse candle. 

I looked at the candle for a minute, decided it was lovely, then marched right into the shop and bought a chocolate macaron.  I guess I'm not French yet.

Edited thanks to the sharp eyes of some very good readers -- merci.

Good-Bye New York/Bonjour Paris

It was almost hard to fly out of New York last night - it had been one of those glorious you-know-summer-is-on-its-way days and everything that wasn't already in bloom in Riverside Park was promising to bloom the instant you turned around.  I knew it wasn't going to be like that in Paris, since my friend Helene had already sent a message that read, "Pack pullovers - it's winter here!"

In fact, this morning, as the taxi from the airport drove along the Boulevard Saint-Germain-des-Pres, there were women in pullovers.  And not just pullovers, woolen scarves, too.  It wasn't quite winter and it wasn't quite spring, either, but never mind, it was Paris and, as always, it was exciting to be coming into the city:  No matter how often I return to Paris, I still get first-time flutters. 

I've got a certain ritual for settling in, but it went by the boards this afternoon because, as soon as I walked out of my apartment, here's what I saw

Before you get nervous, this is art, not accident.  It's one of several works in all media installed around Saint-Germain-des-Pres as part of the 8th annual Parcours Saint-Germain, which pairs artists with luxury boutiques and mythic Saint-Germain-des-Pres spots, like Le Cafe de Flore and the Place Furstenberg.  This year's theme is Once Upon a Time and the upside-down Citroen Traction (our son's favorite car - I don't think he'd like to see it in this condition) is an installation by Claude Leveque. 

Across the street, at the corner of the Church of Saint-Germain, there's an odd doll-like sculpture that's attracting lines of people who want to be photographed with it and, around the corner, at the Place Furstenberg, one of Paris's most photographed squares, the open space is now inhabited by a fantasy family

The works stay up through June 19 and, if you're here and in the neighborhood, it would be impossible for you to miss seeing at least some of the installations.  If you won't be coming, take a look at the website, it's really well done.

When I got back from my walk-around and checked my mail, I saw that there was an exhibition that I would have loved to have seen, but which closed yesterday.  Called Gourmandise, it was a show of jewelry designed by Aude Lechere and "inspired by the world of Poilane."  The show was held at the Ibu Gallery in the magical Palais Royale Gardens and, judging by the invitation, it's just as well I couldn't go because for sure I'd have wanted this, a gold ring to match Poilane's perfect butter cookies, Les Punitions (or Punishments)

Don't you wonder what the jewelry that matched Poilane's huge round loaves of breads looked like?

Good news!  I just found out that Gourmandise will be at Ibu Gallery until July 31. (edited June 11, 2008)