Sardines, Lightly Cured and Pan Fried

Hey guys, I have a short and sweet post for you today featuring one of my favorite little fishies of all time: sardines. Up until a few years ago, I had dismissed any kind of fish often found in cans as little more than cat food. Anchovies, sardines, pickled herring, even tuna. Perhaps it was a lingering sense of embarrassment from school lunches where anything smellier than a ham and cheese sandwich elicited a chorus of "eww" and "gross" from other children, and where bringing in something like tuna fish ensured you would be the cafeteria outcast. As trivial as those past experiences seem now, they were clearly wounds that cut deep.

These days, I say screw what other people think. When I finally tried all of the aforementioned fish, it was love at first taste, I'm never going back. So here is a simple and delicious recipe for sardines that highlight their natural, briny flavor. They are lightly cured in a bright mixture of salt, sugar, and lemon zest then quickly pan fried to enhance their tender texture. Because the curing preserves them slightly, they'll keep in the fridge for up to a week if you don't finish them immediately.

Let's consider this recipe my love ballad for fish of all types, we'll forget about childhood pettiness and start anew. Hope you all enjoy these sardines as much as I do!

Lemon Bars and Finding Inspiration

The light is changing, the days are longer, I just left my job. I am unburdened, and somehow, by some cruel plot twist, I am uninspired like I have never been before. I don't know what to cook. Not for this space here, not for dinner, not for breakfast, I don't even know what I want to eat most days. I fumble around behind the lens like it is my first time picking up a camera, though it has been nearly a year since my food photography journey began. As I sit here typing, the backspace key is my best friend. I can't seem to coherently jot down my thoughts; the words I desperately want to find escape me. Like all things, this will pass, but goddamn, it sucks right now.

Self pity aside, let's talk about these lemon bars, which by some miracle, made it out of the fray. They are a last nod to the departing winter before saying an enthusiastic "goodbye!" to winter citrus/squash/roots and "hello!" to all the greens spring has to offer. They are tart, bright, and not weighed down by too much sugar. Just the way lemon bars should be.

Citrus Stuffed Whole Roasted Fish

In my youth, when I was more adventurous and blissfully ignorant of the world, I used to eat fish eyeballs. It was my special treat. After there was nothing left of a fish except for the carcass and head, I would dig the eyeballs out with my nimble little fingers and eat them. Like an olive. I'd slurp the outside off and spit out the "pit" (for those of you who don't know, at the very center of a cooked fish eye is this inedible, hard, white ball). It wasn't until my friends and classmates from school told me I was a weirdo that I realized eating fish eyes wasn't exactly considered normal by most western standards. Subsequently, it wasn't until I was much older that I realized, who cares what kids think? They are dumb and reject anything outside of their own narrow range of life experiences; myself included, I thought it was weird other people thought eating fish eyeballs was weird.