Saturday 9 June 2012

Salt Pilchard Bruschetta

Okay, so we played sort of fast and loose with this one. We can't get salt pilchards here, so we used fresh sardines. Here's how it goes:

Take 4 salt pilchards/sardines and descale and clean them. Preheat the grill to high, and grill the fish for about 3 minutes on each side. Leave to cool, and then break the fish into small flakes. Throw out the skin and bones (or turn it into fishstock, if you're feeling really energetic!).

Toast slices of ciabatta (or something similar) on both sides. Rub one side of each with peeled garlic cloves and drizzle with good olive oil.

Put the fish on the bread, top with slices of vine-ripened tomato, some very thinly sliced red onion, some chopped parsley, and freshly ground black pepper.

Eat, with delight.

At least, that's the idea, but I was not that convinced. It was... nice. But I wasn't blown away. I think maybe sardines weren't a great replacement for pilchards, even though I think, technically, they're the same fish at different ages. (I may be totally wrong about that, and I am too lazy to google it right now.

In any case, it was okay. But not fabulous. I expected more from this recipe. On the plus side, it was pretty quick and easy.

2 comments:

Sikander7 said...

It was pretty good, but yes, it lacked excitement.

Katrina said...

True sardines are Sardina pilchardus, also called pilchards. Various other species of fish sometimes get sold as "sardines" though so your "sardines" may or may not have been young pilchards.