Simple Sardine Linguine: Ed's $5 Friday

Cathy's busy, Kirk's busy, so today it's ed (from Yuma) sharing a favorite recipe.  And yes, ed sometimes cooks on a budget.

These days we are all looking for cheap and tasty eats when we can find them.  Stuck out here in the desert, I crave seafood, but craving seafood on a budget these days is  tough anywhere.  Today, however, I'm going to share with you an inexpensive and tasty seafood dish that can be made in Yuma and darn near anywhere else in the world.  And this week, the ingredients to feed two people cost me only about five dollars.

Here's what the ingredients look like:

 I will use both cans of sardines in olive oil (on sale this week for $1 each), about two thirds of a pound of linguine (figure $.65 worth), a bunch of flat leaf parsley ($.79 if memory serves), one yellow onion and a head of garlic (around a dollar total), one lemon (this time of year, given away free), four anchovies and a little of their oil, less than a tablespoon of Korean style crushed red pepper, and three tablespoons of capers (together they should bring me up to around $5).

Here's the list of ingredients:

 One medium onion (sliced into strips)
 One head garlic (chopped)
 One bunch flat leaf (Italian) parsley (destemmed and chopped)
 3 TBs drained capers
 Zest and juice of one lemon
 2 cans sardines in olive oil
 4 anchovy filets (and maybe some oil from can)
 2 tsp crushed spicy red pepper
 2/3 lb linguini or other pasta
 Some pasta water

I begin by frying the onions in the oil from the sardines and anchovies:

After the onions are properly fried, I add the chopped head of garlic and the four anchovies, cut into small pieces:
 Before too long, I put in the crushed red pepper, the destemmed flat leaf parsley, and the capers.

Toward the end of the process, I mash up one of the cans of sardines and break the other up into large pieces, adding them to the pan:

 As soon as they are properly stirred, I dump in the zest of the lemon with about half of the lemon's juice:

If I've synchronized things correctly, at this point the linguine will be slightly aldente and ready to eat.  I add the linguine and a little bit of its pasta water into the pan, turn off the heat, and mix everything together.  Because of the fishy oils and the dissolved anchovy, even those noodles that aren't covered with fleshy bits are full of the flavor of the sauce.

When the sauce does not fully integrate with the noodles, I place a clump of noodles in the middle of the plate and put extra sauce across the top of it. The finished dish (this is about one quarter of the complete recipe) looks like this:
 I don't like to brag on my own cooking, but doggone this is good. Even Tina likes it.  The sardine taste is upfront, deep, and thorough.  The lemon, red chili, capers, and abundant parsley contribute flavorful background notes.  Of course, none of my recipes is set in stone. Heck, some aren't even written down on paper. If I want more hot spice, more salty fish flavor,  more lemon caper tang, or even more green herby parsley, I know what to do.  But no cheese never.

Feeling frugal, Tina and I accompanied the pasta with a bottle of Rene Barbier Mediterranean White, which was a nice match - though it doubled the cost of the meal :-(  . But for the truly frugal, I'm sure that this dish would make a bottle of Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio taste better too.

Give this recipe a try. Then mangia!

Comments

[Carol]

Great dish, Ed. It reminds me of my penne pasta with anchovies and asparagus dish that I love. I love the flavor that the anchovies add to the pasta.

[stephen]

Ed, it looks great. Can't wait to try it out.

[sawyer]

i was just thinking about five dollar fridays too and wondering what happened to cathy.
i don't think i've ever had a sardine before...bookmarked this recipe for the future. it looks delicious. what does a caper taste like btw?

[Cathy]

Hi ed- This is a perfect way to use sardines in olive oil other than eating straight from the can. It was my dinner last night, since I was finally hungry again. (I'll be back soon, Sawyer.)

[Michael]

Hi Ed, Great dish. I always try to sneak anchovies into recipes. they really give a nice deep complex backbone to a dish. One of my favorites is collard greens sauteed with tons of garlic and anchovies.Yum!

[ed (from Yuma)]

Carol, stephen, thanks. Try the recipe - modify it how you will - it's pretty good and easy.

sawyer - sardines are very common in Europe and America. A convenient canned protein with mild fishy flavors. As I understand it, several different species are packed under that term. They are very healthy to eat, and being low on the food chain aren't full of mercury etc. For this dish, you don't want the little double layered fish. These were not smoked, although that might provide an interesting flavor addition.

Capers are a slightly pickled bud of a bush native to the mediterranean. More complex and subtle than dill pickle.

Cathy, glad you liked.

And yeh, Michael, anchovies do add that deep complex backbone. I have a friend who sneaks them into all sorts of dishes without telling his wife, who claims she "hates" anchovies. haha.

[Janfrederick]

Nice. I'm making this tonight. A variation I've made in the past is to use the sardines packed in tomato sauce with a little extra tomato sauce (from the Mexican section at the grocery store).

[ed (from yuma)]

Jan, hope you enjoy.

Yeh, I used to make red pasta sauce with sardines in tomato sauce all the time, but I don't like the Mexican sardines. Really best with Monterey bay sardines, but many years they are unavailable.

You can also add fennel, fennel seed, and raisins to the red sardine sauce and I believe it is called St Joseph's sauce. When done right sardine pasta sauce is, imho at least, better than clam sauce.

[Janfrederick]

By the way, this turned out great. However, I was almost fired for reheating my leftovers in the breakroom. Pungent! ;)

[Lillian Hsu]

In the midst of the shelter in place, we've been doing a lot of cooking from the pantry. This was the perfect recipe to use up what's in our house. Gourmet meal, easy to assemble. Thanks, Ed!

[Kirk]

Hi Lilian - We're so glad that you enjoyed the recipe.
Sadly, Ed left us in 2017:

https://mmm-yoso.typepad.com/mmmyoso/2017/09/saying-goodbye-in-memorium-ed-from-yuma.html

But I'm certain he would have loved your comment!
Thanks again for taking the time out to visit and comment and for helping keep Ed's mmm-yoso legacy going!
Hope you are safe and in good health.