Sardines on toast, done properly

Paid four dollars for six fresh sardines at the fish co-op near the Belmont boat ramp on Saturday morning, and the bloke behind the counter looked almost embarrassed handing them over. Four dollars. For fish that good. I’ve paid more than that for a flat white that didn’t deserve the cup it came in. Sardines on toast, done properly, is one of those dishes that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with the expensive stuff when something this good is sitting in an esky at the harbour for small change.

I know sardines have an image problem. Tinned ones in oil, sad and grey, pressed into supermarket sandwiches by people who clearly don’t like themselves very much. Forget all that. Fresh sardines, handled with a bit of respect, are one of the best things that comes out of Australian water, and they cook in about ninety seconds a side. This isn’t a fiddly dish. It’s a fast one, done right.

Why sardines deserve better than they get

Sardines are an oily fish, which is exactly why they work so well on toast. That oil carries flavour the way lean fish just can’t. CSIRO’s research on omega-3 fats points at small oily fish like sardines and mackerel as some of the most efficient sources going around, and they’re sustainably abundant off the southern Australian coast, which lean white fish like snapper generally aren’t. Eating something that’s both good for you and good for the water it came from isn’t a small thing. It’s rare, actually, in seafood.

The other reason I rate them is price. Four to six dollars for a feed that’ll stop two people wanting dinner is hard to argue with. Compare that to what you’d pay for the equivalent weight in salmon fillets and it’s not close.

Buying them so they’re worth cooking

Fresh is non-negotiable here. You want firm bodies, bright clear eyes, and a smell like the ocean rather than like a fish market floor at closing time. If your fishmonger looks at you sideways when you ask them to fillet six sardines, find a different fishmonger. Most will do it for nothing if you’re buying the fish there. If you’re confident with a small knife you can do it yourself in under a minute a fish once you’ve had a go at a couple, but don’t be precious about it, a slightly ragged fillet tastes exactly the same as a tidy one.

Don’t muck about trying to make frozen sardines work for this. They go soft and the texture turns to nothing once you fry them. If fresh isn’t available where you are, this is a dish for another week.

Getting the pan right

This is where most people lose the plot with any small fish. Get your pan properly hot before the fillets go anywhere near it, cast iron or heavy stainless, doesn’t matter which, just make sure it’s actually hot and not lukewarm because you’re impatient. Oil in, fish skin-side down, and leave it alone. Don’t shuffle it around hoping to speed things up. Ninety seconds, maybe less if your fillets are small, then flip for twenty seconds and they’re done. Overcooked sardine fillets turn chalky and lose everything that made them worth buying in the first place.

Ingredients

• 6 fresh sardines, filleted (ask your fishmonger, or do it yourself)
• 4 thick slices good sourdough
• 2 cloves garlic, 1 whole for rubbing, 1 finely chopped
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for the pan
• 1 lemon, zested and cut into wedges
• 1 small red chilli, finely sliced (optional, but I always use it)
• 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Sea salt and cracked black pepper
• A few drops of good vinegar, red wine or sherry

Method

1. Pat the sardine fillets dry with paper towel. Wet fish doesn’t sear, it steams, and you’ll end up with something grey and sad.
2. Toast the sourdough until it’s properly coloured, not just warmed through. Rub each slice with the cut side of the whole garlic clove while it’s still hot, then drizzle with a little olive oil.
3. Get a heavy pan properly hot over medium-high heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil.
4. Season the sardine fillets with salt and pepper. Lay them skin-side down in the pan, in batches if you need to, don’t crowd it.
5. Cook for 60 to 90 seconds without touching them, then flip and cook for another 20 to 30 seconds.
6. Remove from the pan. In the same pan, off the heat, add the chopped garlic and chilli for about 15 seconds, just enough to wake them up without burning the garlic.
7. Pile the sardine fillets onto the toast. Scatter over the parsley, lemon zest, the garlic and chilli from the pan, and a few drops of vinegar.
8. Finish with a wedge of lemon on the side and another small grind of pepper. Eat it straight away, standing up if you have to.

Serves 2 as a light lunch or a starter for four.

A serving idea for when people are coming over

I’ve started doing this as a stand-up starter when we’ve got people around, little toasts cut into fingers rather than whole slices, maybe eight to ten pieces laid out on a board with the lemon wedges scattered through. It looks like more effort than it is, which I’ll admit is half the appeal. Pair it with something sharp and cold, a crisp white or even just sparkling water with lemon, and you’ve covered the first twenty minutes of any gathering without touching the oven.

If you want to build a proper spread around it, this sits well next to something like the kingfish ceviche with lime and chilli I’ve written up before. Both are fast, both rely on fish that’s handled properly rather than dressed up to hide something, and together they make a seafood-forward table that doesn’t need a main course at all.

A variation worth trying

Swap the parsley and chilli combination for a soft herb butter, mash a little butter with chopped tarragon and lemon zest, and dot it over the sardines while they’re still hot so it melts through. It’s richer, obviously, and not something I’d do every week, but it’s a good trick when you want the dish to feel a bit more like dinner and a bit less like a quick lunch. I reckon the simpler version wins most weeks, but the butter has its place.

Another option if you’ve got a glut, mash a tin of white beans with olive oil and lemon and spread that under the fish instead of plain toast rubbed with garlic. It turns the dish into something more substantial without any extra cooking time, which is always worth having up your sleeve.

What this teaches you about cooking fish generally

The thing sardines on toast demonstrates better than almost anything else I cook is that small, oily fish don’t need rescuing. No marinade, no batter, no fourteen ingredients. Heat, a bit of fat, something acidic to cut through the richness, and you’re done. It’s the same principle behind a lot of good Australian seafood cooking, and it’s worth applying it elsewhere. If you’re after more ideas along these lines, ocean trout with ginger and coriander follows roughly the same logic, as does the smoked trout and potato salad with horseradish I put together a while back.

Healthdirect’s guidance on eating more fish generally points in this direction too, two serves a week of fish like sardines is a reasonable, achievable target for most households, and it’s a lot easier to hit when the dish in front of you takes ten minutes rather than an hour. If you’re trying to shift the pattern of what ends up on the table during the week without overhauling everything, it’s worth reading through simple ways to eat more plants without a meal plan, the same thinking about small, repeatable changes applies just as well to fish as it does to vegetables.

I’ll be straight with you, tinned sardines have their place in a pantry, and I keep them for emergencies same as anyone. But putting them in the same sentence as fresh sardines done this way does the fresh ones a disservice. Four dollars and ninety seconds a side buys you something genuinely good. Not many things in a kitchen are that honest about what they cost and what they give back.

– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen