Sardines

Eating sardines in Portugal is a national endeavour. It starts when the fishermen are finally given permission to catch sardines and it ends when the fish disappears from our shores. Sadly, at the end of the season, when they are most flavourful, most people are already a bit tired of eating them.

Sardines are almost always eaten grilled on charcoal. Which means that you eat them at the restaurant or you have some place outside where you can grill them. If you live in an urban area, you most likely will annoy your neighbours, but no-one seems to care.

It's very hard to see beautiful sardines at the fishmonger but not being able to grill them. The recipe I found solves that conundrum. Apparently this is a modern take on a old technique: people used to sprinkle flour on roof tiles, the old kind that are basically shaped like a half cylinder, place the gutted and clean sardines on top, sprinkle more flour and bake them in a wood oven after having baked bread. This is essentially the same thing, but using a household oven:

• gut and carefully clean the sardines;
• generously sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and let them absorb it for half hour or so;
• line an oven tray with baking paper, which you liberally sprinkle with a layer of flour -- I used wheat flour but some people recommend corn flour;
• coat each sardine with flour and place them on the tray, making sure they do not overlap; alternating the orientation of each sardine helps;
• sprinkle with olive oil and bake at 200C for about 15-20 minutes - the sardines should gain a nice golden color but be careful not to overcook them.

It is amazing how satisfying these turned out. If you remove the skin, the actual flesh tastes very much like charcoal grilled sardines!