lemons and grilled sardines

This week, we needed to take a few pictures of grilled sardines for an upcoming article in Long Beach Magazine. Since most people are only familiar with sardines that come out of a can, we wanted to show how great this fish can be when prepared simply to bring out its delicate flavor. This was exactly what LA Times food writer Russ Parsons recommended when he came to speak at the Aquarium of the Pacific a few weeks ago. We took his advice and went to the Japanese market near the Honda plant to pick a few pilchards.

Whole, grilled sardines

When Jerry (the Aquarium’s CEO) heard what we were up to, he enthusiastically described what he called the best fish he’d ever eaten: grilled sardines from a roadside vendor in Portugal. Naturally, we offered to bring a grill to work, so that Jerry could see how ours compared to the ones he remembered. Unfortunately, Jerry has been attending a conference with NOAA Science Advisory Board members in the Aquarium’s Watershed Classroom. They could come out for a lunch-time snack, but we are not allowed to serve food on the Aquarium premises. Long story short: that’s how we ended up in the Aquarium’s back parking lot with my backyard grill, a bucket of sardines, and a handful of lemons.

Andrew at the grill

Andrew putting on the finishing touches

We grilled them whole, rather than using Russ Parson’s decidedly more elegant method of preparation. Andrew’s recipe for these sardines included:
Grilled lemons
Crushed pistachios
Fennel pollen
Sea salt
Olive oil

…And the official scientific consensus is in: grilled sardines are delicious!

Tags: Fennel pollen, NOAA, Russ Parsons, sardines, tailgating

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 2:23 am and is filed under Recipes, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.