“Fishy” is one of the great, underused flavors. Those who know and love it must perform lingual acrobatics to describe what they mean and why it’s a good thing: we speak of fresh sea flavor, of salty air, of garlic’s pungency; of bacon, even. And these terms are helpful; a good fishy fish indeed has all those components. But so specific and irreplaceable is the dominant flavor dimension of a small, oily fish that I feel it would be best to instead develop an appreciation for the “fishy taste” instead, accept it, and then find it as a component in other foods (and not vice versa).

I said “oily fish”, which has a pretty technical meaning. Oily fish include tuna, salmon, trout, sardine, and anchovy. They are distinctly different from whitefish like cod and pollock. A not-too-controversial statement, I hope: the typical fish sandwich served in the US of A contains a fried or grilled whitefish, dressed in tartar and lettuce. And that’s fine; I’m sure many places do that well. But there’s a whole world of fishy flavor waiting to be discovered. Let’s start with three sandwiches.

Tuna Sandwich

• 1 rustic baguette
• 1 can of good tuna, drained
• 1 egg
• 1/2 green pepper, sliced
• 5-6 black olives, halved; preferably whole Kalamatas, freshly pitted
• 1-2 tbsp vinaigrette of balsamic vinegar, mustard, mayo, olive oil, salt & pepper.

Hard-boil the egg using the technique described in our Pickled Eggs post, then slice it. Halve the baguette and “canoe” it, meaning, remove some of the fluffy inside to make room for the toppings. (You can use the removed bread to make breadcrumbs, or heck, just eat it.)

Make the vinaigrette (this is a whole other post, but in brief: start with vinegar in the bowl, add a bit of mustard and mayo, stir until smooth, then slowly drip in the oil while stirring, making sure it’s all integrated and the oil doesn’t float on top; season.)

Fill the bottom half of the bread with the tuna; pack it in well. Follow with the sliced egg, the halved olives, then the green pepper. Drizzle with the vinaigrette. Close the sandwich and…

…Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. This is when permeating, integrated, rich flavor is born. If it’s going to be a few hours before you eat it, store the sandwich in the fridge. I recommend, however, leaving it on the counter and eating it at room temperature after an hour or two. Pair with white wine and a bag of chips.

Notes: My favorite tuna is Ortiz. I usually buy Peloponnese olives. Frantoia olive oil is still the best I’ve had.

Sardine Sandwich

• 1 soft baguette (Vietnamese if possible; these are fluffier and lighter than the rustic, Italian style used in the tuna sandwich.)
• 1 can sardines in tomato sauce, the best you can find (recommendation below)
• 1 large shallot or 1/2 onion, sliced
• 1-2 tbsp Kewpie mayo
• Butter, salt, sugar
• Balsamic vinegar

We’ll be caramelizing the onions first. The secret to this is to cook the onions twice, first at high heat (to brown them) then at medium heat (to soften them). Heat some butter over high heat; as soon as the butter is melted, go in with the onions, salt, and sugar. Give it a few minutes, making sure the onions soften but don’t burn. Then turn the heat down to medium and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring often. When almost done, splash in some balsamic vinegar and stir lightly. You should end up with sticky, dark onions - not melting-soft, though.

Slice the baguette with a knife sharp enough to not crush the fluffy inside. Spread the mayo on both halves. Fill the bottom half with the entire contents of the sardine can - sauce and oil and all. This will be a juicy sandwich (hence the fluffier, more absorbent bread!) Top with the caramelized onions. Eat pronto, perhaps with a side of pickled daikon and a glass of Saison Dupont.

Notes: I love Pollastrini and Connétable sardines; the stuff you find at Safeway (Crown Prince, Brunswick) is almost unusable. Find the real deal at your friendly, fancy deli. As for mayo, I either make my own or use the excellent Japanese Kewpie; no US mayo comes close. Always cut with the sharpest (i.e. safest) knife you have - mine is a Global santoku.

For sardine discussion and recommendations, and a general argument for eating small fishes, make sure you follow the peerless Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine.

Anchovy Sandwich

• 3-5 anchovy filets, lightly patted dry
• 1 ball fresh mozarella, sliced chunky
• 1 handful spring mix (endive, arugula, radicchio, mâche, frisée, etc.)
• 1 sandwich-sized square of good focaccia bread 
• Olive oil and balsamic vinegar
• Black pepper

As simple as it gets: slice the focaccia, top with mozzarella, anchovies - acciughe, alice! - then finish off with the salad drizzled with the wetware, and season to taste. Enjoy with a Chianti or an Italian soda, or maybe even some drinking vinegar if you can find it.

Notes: For this recipe, your best bet is to visit the local Italian deli. Hopefully they’ll have fluffy, shiny focaccia; a big jar of mozzarella balls in whey; maybe even some Ortiz or Scalia anchovies (the former are amazing, but a bit hard to track down.)

And a final note regarding the product links above and on Salt & Fat in general: they point to our Amazon affiliate accounts, which means we get a small percentage of any money you spend on Amazon when you follow our links. We believe in shopping fresh and local, but if something is hard to find in your area, Amazon is a pretty good option these days. Beats settling for subpar substitutions from the local brick & chain & mortar.

That’s me, Salt, wearing a custom chef jacket courtesy of Fat, Jim Ray. I’m holding my gift for Mr. Steven Frank, a plush hambone.

(Photo by Antichrista)

Quiche made in a poach pod. Poach pod: it’s not just for poaching anymore!

If there’s a food you don’t like, try eating it pickled. - Neven Mrgan

True as this adage is, I confess it may not apply to pickled eggs so much, as most people like eggs. But this will get us started on pickling in general, which we hope to revisit soon.

A few weeks ago, some chicken-owning friends offered us three dozen eggs. Not one to say no to local eggs - one of those ingredients where the small-batch stuff is really noticeably better than the store kind - I then had to decide what to do with thirty-six eggs. Enter pickling, one of the best ways to preserve food.

We’ll need perfectly hardboiled eggs, so let’s start with well washed and cleaned eggs - I put 24 of them in a large pot. Cover the eggs by 1 inch of water; bring to a boil on high, then immediately remove from heat, cover, and let gently cook for 17 minutes.

While you wait, fill a large bowl with ice. After the 17 minutes are up, carefully transfer the eggs (using a slotted spoon) to the ice bath and let them chill for 2 minutes. The egg will shrink and let go of the shell. By the way, don’t really want to hardboil freshly laid eggs. Slightly older ones (a few weeks or so) will part with the shell more smoothly; the flavor shouldn’t be much different.

This next step is usually skipped when hardboiling, unfortunately: bring the water in the pot to a boil again, and move eggs to it in batches. Boil them for 10 seconds - this will expand the shell even further. In the ice bath they go again after this second boil. This heat-cool-heat-cool cycle will make things easier when you get to the longest part of this process: peeling the eggs. It’s a good idea also to let the eggs cool down in the final ice bath for 15 minutes or so. You’ll be making the pickling brine during this time.

You can do endless variations on brine; the basic idea is: 50% water, 50% acid, plus spices. In my case, I mixed 10 oz balsamic vinegar, 10 oz apple cider vinegar, and 20 oz water. For spices and seasonings, I threw in a few cloves of garlic, black peppercorns, half a tablespoon of salt, and 4 tablespoons of brown sugar. Brought to a near-boil over medium-high heat, this wicked brew filled the kitchen with the smell of winter appetizers. While the brine cools down (it should not steam at all), peel the eggs. It helps if you can get help from friends, loved ones, neighborhood children, retired businessmen, elderly novelists, etc. etc.

What sort of container should you use? Anything with a tight seal and a wide mouth will work. I picked up a wide, half-gallon glass jar with a screw-on lid. Glass will let you see the beautiful color and texture of white orbs floating in liquid midnight, and it’s also less likely to stain and absorb the smell of vinegar. Whatever container you go with, wash it with lots of soap and hot water.

When everything’s cool and clean, spoon the eggs into the jar, pour the brine over them - making sure it covers them all - and store your proud batch of pickled eggs in the fridge. Now, some folks will tell you pickled eggs will keep just fine even if not refrigerated; I say, why risk it. Whether they’re cooked and pickled or not, I wouldn’t leave eggs at room temperature longer than a few days.

Stored in the fridge, these will keep up to 18 months (as if you won’t eat them sooner than that.) How soon is too soon, though? I tasted this batch at one day, three days, one week, two weeks, and four weeks. After one day, all I got was very forward vinegar on the outside, and little complexity on the inside. Waiting a week allowed the acid to find its way to the yolk; it was a quite different dish. After four weeks, the flavors deepened and the eggs toughened a bit (which isn’t necessarily bad, though they may get rubbery after several months.) My recommendation is to wait at least one week before serving.

And how do you serve these beautiful black marbles, exactly? Rinsed and dried and bare isn’t too bad! There’s plenty of flavor here. The typical way of fancying them up is to devil the yolks. May I suggest mixing them with a basil-and-chili aioli? Or perhaps horseradish and beet? Top a leafy-green salad with them? As with the brine itself, do what feels right, do it often, and don’t be afraid to experiment.

Yesterday I made spaghetti with tomato/parmesan sauce for lunch, and I added a simple salad to the mix.

But wait - what are chopsticks, of all things, doing in my bowl? Prepare to have your mind blown.

You see, whatever you think of chopsticks’ utility as carriers of dumplings, stir fry, rice, noodles, or sushi (I find them decent only at handling the first one), allow me to suggest that they are in fact the perfect utensil for eating salad. And as far as I’ve traveled and dined, I have not seen anyone capitalize on this.

Think about it - salad usually consists of mostly flat, folded-in leaves arranged in a heap. The top of that heap is somewhat forkable, though it’s hard to apply pressure without lifting up either no leaves or all of them. Poking flat objects just isn’t optimal.

Enter the chopsticks, with their power to compress leaves and use the friction of the resulting random shape to their advantage. No more awkward pulling of forked-through leaves. No more chasing the last few bits of lettuce around the bowl. Point and pinch, and enjoy.

I’ve been on an egg kick lately, so Jim’s post about eggs in a basket came at the perfect time to introduce a recurring Salt & Fat feature: our experiences cooking each other’s recipes. Call it peer review, double-checking, self-commenting. You’ve read Jim’s post, right? Good!

First note: I don’t actually own a cast-iron pan. Yes, they’re just grand at cooking, heavy and rugged and manly. But I’m too lazy to clean them the long way. So I compromise and wield a blue steel pan, which is also heavy and nonstick, but completely smooth and so easier to wipe. It doesn’t replace cast iron completely; hey, I’m not a fan of upside-down pineapple cake anyway.

In the pan went the butter and hazelnut bread, then eggs followed by fumee de sel (smoked salt). I like my eggs very runny and my toast pretty dark, so next time I’ll let the toast do its thing for a minute, flip it, and then break the eggs.

I should mention that Christa, my better half, dislikes yolks, so I made her an egg-white-only version. You’ll definitely want to flip the whole thing there since egg whites cook so unevenly (the bottom burns quickly, the top stays liquid forever.)

Normally I’m not a fan of seedy, grainy bread, but this was a perfect pairing. A drizzle of truffle oil over the whole thing, a side of breakfast sausage and hot-sauced kewpie mayo, and brother, what a breakfast. Thanks, Jim.