Spicy White Anchovies

It’s a cliché to say that anchovies get a bad rap. Everyone knows they’re polarizing—and most people avoid the pole altogether. The thing is, it’s not anchovies’ fault. It’s ours. Just-caught anchovies are universally delicious. It’s mis-steps taken to cure, prepare, store and serve that cause such ruin.

How to cure anchovies.

For months, in sea salt. The Maestro Salador oversees anchovy curing, cracking the salt barrels every week or two to check on the color, the smell and the texture of the fish inside. Sometimes salt is taken out and more is added. Sometimes a weight is placed on top to press out more liquid. It’s a craft like those I’ve seen at other traditional food makers, like aging cheese or smoking bacon, and like those crafts, at the best places, it’s usually plied by very serious people who’ve been doing the work for decades. When it’s done cheaply it’s rushed and the variations of seasonality and nature aren’t taken into account—and the fish suffers.

How to prepare anchovies.

With knives, not scissors. Filleted anchovies, the type we offer, get their their bones removed at the factory. When scissors are involved the bones are cut near the surface but part remains in the fish and the texture suffers. When that’s done with paring knives like at Ortiz and Rizzoli, our long-time anchovy suppliers, every pin bone is exhumed. All of this is done by hand and it’s three times slower to use knives instead of scissors, so the price is higher accordingly.

How to store anchovies.

In a refrigerator. Unlike tuna and sardines, both of which improve when stored in a tin at room temperature, anchovies get worse—mushier, saltier, less sweet. Refrigerating them slows this process. Almost all retailers and customers keep their anchovies on a room temperature shelf but they shouldn’t. It’s not a big deal to have them out of refrigeration for a few days or more, but in the long term, anchovies will be much better chilled. We store them in refrigeration at Zingerman’s and you should slip them in the fridge at home, too. After you open a jar or tin, top them up with oil so they’re always covered.

How to serve anchovies.

At room temperature. Take them out of your fridge fifteen minutes before you want to use them. Lay big, beautiful fillets like La Gran Anchoa on a plate and top with a bit of olive oil and maybe a twist of lemon. Slip some everyday fillets like Rizzoli onto an egg salad sandwich. Or, yes, put them on a pizza. Don’t throw the oil out! Make a salad dressing with it or use it to sauté onions for your next dish.

Sardines and anchovies are two foods that, at least in America, share a strange combination of fascination, scorn, passion and obscurity. Since you can go years without seeing an anchovy article or a sardine TV show thought I’d spend a little time explaining a bit about them.

Anchovies first.

The Mediterranean is the traditional— and generally, still the best—source of anchovies. There is no single “anchovy fish” to be found, but rather a series of aquatic relatives—anywhere from sixteen to upwards of one hundred—that make them recognizable to us as members of the same fishy family. Like any other “crop” the haul is subject to the vagaries of weather. At most a small boat might bring in fifteen tons. Other nights, with high winds, they come in with nothing. A fisherman’s yield can vary from year to year by a factor of ten. All of which contributes to the high cost of anchovies which are often two or three times as expensive as sardines.

The curing process is comparable to that of aged hams in that it’s basically the anchovy’s own juices that make it happen, with bacterial fermentation playing a bit of a supporting role. For most of human history this salt packing was the way that anchovies were sold. It’s only in the 19th century—with the advent of modern canning—that the industry introduced the idea of filleting and packing in olive oil. Still, even if they are sold in oil like most of ours, they were first cured in salt.

Onto sardines.

For centuries previous, people were catching, cleaning and salting sardines as others did anchovies. There are still salted sardines to be found. Chuck Prine, a 40 year sardine veteran, gives indirect credit to Napoleon for tinned sardines: “His troops were dying of starvation. He was offering rewards for anyone who could come up with a way to conserve food. A guy named Nicholas Appert took a fried fish, and, if you will put it in glass with olive oil, and sealed it. It lasted 35 or 40 days. That became the first canned sardine.”

Mediterranean sardine producers in Portugal, Spain, and France work with what are known as pilchards. These are fat, very flavorful fish, usually only three, four, or at most five to a can. While France pioneered
sardine curing, many consider Portugal to be the best source today.