"I'm probably not going to be that hungry for dinner. You should just make something for yourself." Which meant I could use obscene amounts of cilantro, heat and something else. I decided on sardines.
Cost per person $3.26 Over half that is the sardines.
I like the idea of eating sardines due to them being a nutritional powerhouse meal, but as with some fish, the smell is a bit offputting for me. Okay, ready for the following rabbit hole?
Recently, I read that trimethylamine (TMA) is a breakdown product in salt-water fish, which is arguably the lead cause for that characteristic smell, which starts to develop after such fish are caught. Evidently the chemical (in oxide form) serves a critical purpose in helping the cells of such fish balance osmotic pressure. This prevents them from losing fatal amounts of moisture from their tissues. Humans don't commonly have to deal with that issue because we might only be in ocean water for a few hours at best, but oceanic salt water is murderous on skin over time, and will actually completely dissolve a submerged body (bones and all) eventually(!)
Anyway, where were we? It does seem that there are some things which can help manage the TMA smell. Acidic things, in fact.
The American Society for Nutrition specifically describes lemon juice, vinegar and tomato as reducing fish odor by causing TMA to bind with water and become less volatile.
https://nutrition.org/is-fish-smelly/
This actually sounds kind of promising for canned sardines, from what I can tell. Worthy of an experiment on my end, anyway, which I'll post about if the results are interesting.
One other thing to note is that most freshwater fish don't have the TMA smell issue, but there are evidently exceptions, such as with tilapia. Also, TMA might be the leading cause of 'fishy smell' in a lot of cases, but there are of course other compounds and processes at work.
Otay, thank you coming to my jackass TED talk. :D
These were baked with the potatoes and had almost no smell after that. But my body smells tinned fish and craves it. Learned behavior for a nutrition bomb?
Love that, and over here that learned behavior's helped me get used to eating seaweed on the regular, with its lovely iodine content and whatnot. Btw, do you reckon it was moreso the baking process or the co-ingredients which vamoosed the fish smell?
Anyway, just came back from the store, where I picked up four tins of Chicken-of-the-Sea sardines, plus a jug of V8 spicy hot tomato cocktail as a marinade / cooking agent. Two of the tins are plain, in water. Two lightly smoked, in oil. I'll probably get to the 'speriment by this weekend, at least.
Still need to put together my conclusions on the "Ezekial" (sprouted) bread. Getting kinda late to post I guess, so I'll try to schedule for a noon release, tomorrow.
The roasting dried the fish out. Made the volatiles go away.
I have never tried Ezekiel bread. I don't trust any bread that has to live in a freezer. Not a fan of the texture from previously frozen bread. I know that for some people it's their only real option for bread like things. But I'm not one of them.
The weird texture (quite apart from freezing) is practically '#1 with a gun' in terms of why sprouted bread's probably not something I'm going to regularly eat. Hail no, for me it'll likely remain the occasional croissant and 'pan integral' from here on out.
I should be saving this for the upcoming post, but one of the things that made me completely wide-eyed is just how much the grinding-in-to-flour process changes the whole ground-grain bread taste (and for sure, added glycemic punch). Sprouted bread REALLY opened my eyes upon that, maybe not unlike your (IIRC) relative disgust upon typical fake-meat burgers. What I'm trying to say is that I find ground-grain bread to be *incredibly* silky-smooth in the mouth, even loaded up a bunch of extra-grains, seeds, nut-fragments, as with pan integral.
Like-- you nail that foundation, and it's almost impossible to screw up, sort of like with pizza and sex. XD Whereas your foundation is pants, and it can be almost impossible to save the situation. Eh, something like that.
I got a can of tinned mussels in going to try this with tomorrow.
Can you separate the contents in half? Then you can try half as-is, then the other part marinaded with acid-agent of choice.
I'm setting up my weekend culinary experiment for this with plain & smoked sardines, in a spicy tomato-based marinade, as described in other comments here.
I will leave one mussel unadulterated as a control and report my findings tomorrow.
:D
I'm back. I drained the can and added a half half mixture of vinegar and lemon juice for an hour, aside from one. It did not take any taste away, but added a nice brightness to the mussels. I actually highly recommend it!
Muscle Ceviche but cooked
I'm actually cooking up some spaghetti and making a ghetto frutti di mare.
My childhood Christmas dinner. Maybe Christmas eve on occasion if we were doing lasagna or prime rib for Christmas.
Unrelated to the meal:
But i was some guy who was kind of an asshole a few months back in the comments.
Sorry, was in a bad spot in life and just lashed out for no reason.
But also you really stepped up your food photography/presenting game since then and I'm not talking only about the more vibrant colours. So much intend can be seen in the last few meals you presented i clicked trough. I'm not selfcentered enough to think i had any influence on this but since i also critized you in the past on this angle i want to make sure i compliment your efforts right now.
Related to the meal:
Looks great. Gonna make this, too in the next few days.
I improvise a raised area that is closer to the light source and stops me from holding the camera two feet above the food.
I thought I was the only one who had sardines on their potatoes! I just do a simple baked potato with cheddar, sour cream, garlic salt, pepper, butter, chives, paprika if the mood hits, and... a tin of the sardines in oil (drained). It's become my favorite meal lately.
I eat sardines almost daily, though. Egg-and-sardine salad, 7-layer bean dip with sardines, and there's also a quasi-pizza casserole sort of thing with sardines in it that I do pretty frequently. Sardines are by far the meat I eat the most of.
And of course, sardines are one of the few varieties of fish that has such low levels of mercury that eating them daily isn't a concern to speak of at all.
I'm so used to the sardine smell that I basically don't smell it any more, but it might be that sardines in oil have less of the fish smell than sardines in water.
I almost added an egg to this.
I like sardines in French bread pizza. Other things too but you mentioned pizza like things.
That's not an obscene amount of cilantro. An obscene amount would make this look more like a salad.
You have a bit of cilantro.
I did find myself running out as I ate it and regretted not doubling the amount.
Saving this.
Here is the base recipe I used. Instead of olive oil I used the oil from the sardine tin. I'd recommend adding olive oil as well for crispier results. Just add the sardines when tossing the potatoes. The rest of the recipe is the same except I don't have ancho chilli powder and just used my homemade stuff
Those look so good.
Looks great!
Tastes great. Very filling.
Ugh, it's pretty rare I'm tempted by meat, but this does it.
Looks delicious! Cilantro doesn't grow here in the summer but I have basil, going to copy this meal.
Italian parsley works too.
Back to say I made this tonight - roasted potatoes and onion with preserved lemon and salt, then tossed them with basil and sardines. Yum.
Nice modifications. Glad you got some joy from this tasty meal.
i have the gene that makes cilantro taste inedible so i would hate being served this
It's only garnish so it could be served without it.
yeah it looks great without it, would love to try some without the cilantro
Make it. Enjoy it.
Looks good but sardines... I'd rather oil my robot with them than eat it
You could use smoked squid or anchovies instead if you prefer. Please use oils or fats that won't go rancid for your robot. It is all in the manual.
I learned anchovies are the best robot oil from Mom™ herself
If you don't understand it from Futurama
I have seen the historical documents.
Anchovies on pizza is excellent, but they have to go on before the cheese.
Edit: are excellent? Whatever.
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