Sardines Two Ways: Oil-Roasted with Mayo and Pickled Onions, & Pan-Fried with Fried Lemon by Alison Roman

This is a GUEST POST by the one, the extraordinary, Margaret Winchell. As she will soon note below, we struuuuuggled to find fresh sardines. Calling many fish mongerers in Chicago and Michigan proved fruitless, so Margaret got creative. She went out of her way to find fish and friends to eat it, and wrote about it all with her signature spunk and knowledgeable tips

Margaret, thanks for being a #1 supporter of me and this project, in word and in deed. You’re my true friend.

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Let’s get this out of the way: I made two recipes that call for fresh sardines without fresh sardines. If I were a recipe writer, I would roll my eyes at me. But Annie and I both looked high and low for whole, fresh sardines - she, in Chicago, and me, in southwestern Michigan, and we found none. Alison repeatedly notes how oily sardines are, so I planned to sub in a different oily fish. My first choice was mackerel because my research showed them to be similar enough, but that was also not available! So: here we are with rainbow trout. 

While I was working on these dishes, I kept asking myself, how much do you get to deviate from a recipe before you have to acknowledge that you’re making a different dish? I don’t have a strict rule, but this feels like it’s pushing it. I invited two of my best grad school pals over for “Fish Night” on our first day of classes. Here’s what we ate:

Oil-Roasted Sardines with Mayonnaise, Pickled Onions, and Lots of Parsley

*Bonus go-with recipe: Mayo for people who don’t like mayo

Pan-Fried Sardines with Fried and Salted Lemon

Overnight Focaccia, Tonight

Roasted Broccolini

Boiled baby yellow potatoes (they’re great with aioli!)

…and it was a totally fine fish night menu! The win here really was the combination of flavors and textures on the table. Assembling little bites of focaccia-fish-aioli-pickled onion or potato-fish-lemon-broccolini is so satisfying to me because it feels like you get to do an activity while you eat. It’s entertaining to build tiny food towers! 

oil-roasted trout

The oil-roasted fish was nothing to write home about, but with the accoutrements, it didn’t really matter. What made me grumpy is that Alison has you use a whole head of garlic and several sprigs of thyme that never really make their presence known in the fish. She has you cut the garlic head in half lengthwise and put it and the thyme in the pan with the sardines (trout) while they roast, but they only bake for 15-20 minutes. This wasn’t long enough for the garlic to be really roasted (and thus edible as a side), and the garlic and thyme didn’t make enough contact with the oil for it to serve as a useful conduit for the flavors. I wondered why she didn’t have you smash several cloves of garlic and scatter them around the pan, or even give them a head start in the oil in a saucepan before roasting. The skin on my trout also didn’t get very crispy with her method, but that might have been different with sardines.

Now about the mayo: this is aioli. They are the same thing, but if your goal is to make a “mayo for people who don’t like mayo,” you bypass so many obstacles by calling it “aioli.” But whatever you call it, it’s a little tricky! There was a span of a few weeks early in high school when I encountered several recipes for mayo or aioli that came with a disclaimer of “people think this is hard, but my method is foolproof!” (Often said about making mayo in a blender.) Yeah, OK. They were not foolproof. But this mayo went just fine! She has you use two egg yolks, which is more than you need for this amount of oil, but I described it to Annie over the phone as an insurance policy.

Let’s take a detour for a primer on emulsions! Mayo, aioli, creamy salad dressings, and many other sauces are emulsions. This just means it’s a homogeneous mixture of oil and water. In order to get oil and water to combine and not separate, you need an emulsifier (like an egg yolk) to serve as a mediator between oil and water and help them get along. In making mayo, you start with an egg yolk, often with a little mustard and some lemon juice, and very gradually whisk in oil. The first time I made it successfully, I got my station set up, called my friend Amy, and put her on speaker so I could have both hands free for drizzling and whisking. I was so paranoid about going too fast with the oil integration that I paced it out over the course of a whole hour. This time, I called Annie and did it in about 15 minutes. This is growth!

Last thoughts on aioli: it’s tough to gauge seasoning on a condiment. I tasted the aioli on its own a few times and kept wanting more acid and more salt, so I added them, and I’m glad I did. But when I put the aioli in the fridge for a bit while I worked on the other dishes, I wasn’t convinced it was going to have enough spunk. It’s just so unctuous! It’s hard to ever taste it and say, “I want a big spoonful of that in my mouth NOW.” So, if you make aioli, go farther than you think you should on acid and salt, but also bear in mind what it will accompany. The lemon slices and pickled onions did a lot of work here in balancing out the creamy aioli, but if I were serving it with something less zippy, I would want the aioli to be more assertive.

pan-fried trout

For fish on its own, we all preferred the pan-fried fish with fried and salted lemon. I took a bite and said, “This tastes like dessert fish!” I know this sounds weird. But! Alison has you fry lemon slices in some browned butter until the whole thing is deep and caramelly. The skin on the fish gets crackly in the pan-frying. And the other lemon slices are quick-cured in salt and sumac. When you put it all together, you have caramel notes from the brown butter, a salty-acidic pop from the sumac lemons, and crispiness from the fish skin. It could so be a lemon pastry. 

212 and 213 recipes cooked, 12 to go.

Spiced Black Lentil Salad with Oil-Packed Tuna, Radishes, and (Purple) Potatoes

The idea of a nicoise salad has never appealed to me. Primarily because of the oil-packed tuna element. I can tolerate tuna on toasted sourdough, but beyond that, the concept of canned fish makes me squirm. The other parts of a classic nicoise, I like, though I wouldn’t normally pair them together for a casual lunch dish: steamed potatoes, runny eggs, blanced green beans, and some form of grain. Each a lovely idea, but not all together. 

However, since I had made Alison’s Spiced Lentils the day before, and I’d prefer not to make them twice, I chose to save them for this salad. Call it Lentil Maximization. (To learn more about these lentils, and for the final installation of Annie’s Lentil Storytime, click here.

I had lots of green beans, potatoes, and eggs on hand this day, so I made two servings of the salad, one for me and one for Jordan. We were both working from home. It took me approximately 20 minutes to make the meal, which was just enough time between two meetings to whip something up. (If I hadn’t already prepped the lentils, it would have taken much longer.) 

To maximize the pot of boiling water on my stove, I chose to boil the potatoes, blanch the green beans, and cook the eggs all at the same time. I just took them out at different intervals. Any chance I get to do less dishes, I’ll take it. Especially at lunchtime. I’m much more willing to take on dinner dishes than I am lunch dishes. It’s a principle of mine. 

I was most worried about the tuna tasting too fishy, but was pleasantly surprised by the Trader Joe’s brand of oil-packed tuna. Though I still can’t say I enjoyed the tuna (because it’s tuna), I can say that I wasn’t fished out when eating it, which is a win. 

Jordan enjoyed the salad. I’d say I mostly did too -- I’m a sucker for vegetables tossed in lemon juice, salt and pepper. I personally won’t make this particular salad again, but I wholeheartedly recommend making it if you’re a fan of nicoise salads. If nicoise is what you seek, then a fresh, lemony, herbal and light nicoise is what you’ll find here. 

154 recipes cooked, 71 to go.

Overnight Focaccia, Tonight

(This is the third installment of the “Life is often a lot like” series. The other two installments are here and here.)

Life is often a lot like making focaccia bread. From the very beginning, you’re full of doubt. For one thing, the ingredients seem insufficient for the task. You struggle to imagine how tiny grains of yeast, water, oil, and flour can possibly form a pillowy dough large enough to fill a baking sheet. The tools before you feel lacking, which sometimes translates to the lie that you yourself are lacking. The lie is so potent, you consider forgoing bread for dinner altogether. I mean, think of the carbs. But also, think of all those delicious carbs…

Remember what Jill said, failure is where character is formed. Make the bread, learn the lesson, let the yeast do what it was created to do. With a heart divided between doubt and hope, you begin to whisk. Whisking water, yeast, and oil until well combined, nothing you haven’t done before.

Now to add the flour. Five cups of bread flour. You scoop one half cup at a time, feigning carefulness. When really one large dumping of flour would yield the same result. Doubt creeps in again. That’s a lot of dry flour for that amount of liquid. You struggle to incorporate it all with your wooden spoon. You put your whole body to work, leaning into the stirring, the scraping up of dry bits of flour, the combining of a craggy mess. Everything’s a mess. Where’s my apron? Now for a big decision: follow your instinct to add a teaspoon of water for those last grains of flour or forgo your idea for the sake of following instructions. What happens when the rules go against your sense of right and wrong? Which do you discard? Worry about the moral implications of that question later. You’re making focaccia, remember? You add the teaspoon of water before you can face more doubt, and move onto what you, and the bread, require: rest.

Rest for a whole hour. Cover it with plastic and let time carry the weight of the process. Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive decision of all. Funny how often you forget that truth. An hour later, and the dough has indeed doubled in size. You sprinkle your counter with flour and knead the dough, pushing it with your palm and letting it fold onto itself. Over and over, and quickly, until the surface appears smooth and elastic. You coat the bowl with olive oil and put the dough back down for another nap. You’re still surprised that the dough doubles in size, though it’s only because yeast keeps doing it’s job. Me of little faith.

Light, airy, and sticky, you turn the dough out on a well-oiled baking sheet, pushing it out to the edges, so it can rest for one final hour. If there’s one lesson to learn from bread, it’s that good things happen to those who nap.

Turn on the oven, slice an onion, have flaky salt and more oil at the ready. You play the risen dough like a piano, plucking keys, pressing your fingertips to dimple the surface. Scatter the remaining ingredients and watch as the bread turns a golden brown. You spy on the baking bread and wonder why you ever doubted those tiny grains of yeast. After all, you’ve been told your whole life that, “though she be little, she is fierce.” 

146 recipes cooked, 79 to go.

Olive-Oil Roasted Vegetables by Alison Roman

​​Life is often a lot like making roasted tomatoes. You cannot decide you want it an hour beforehand. You must plan ahead. In the morning, you turn on the oven and set it to preheat. On a snowy day, this is a welcome action. The summer is a different matter. It’s true that your feelings change depending on the season you’re in. Don’t let that inconsistency throw you, let seasons be seasons.

To prepare the tomatoes, you first must cut them in half. Expose their insides, full of juices and seeds, membranes and pith. You place them in a deep, wide pan, putting all of your fruits in one proverbial basket. Their cut-sides look up, revealing their nearly identical designs. Fresh tomato faces, all in a row, giving you their full attention. You take it in. You choose to notice their beauty. To really look is always a choice. You’re tempted to bask in their fixation, but you know you must move on.

You reach for the large bottle of olive oil and pour it generously over the tomato faces. It is generous because olive oil is costly, and you can’t avoid the fact of expense, even when it comes to tomato sauce. A sprinkle of salt, a toss of thyme sprigs and garlic, and they’re ready for the oven.

Like many worthy endeavors, waiting is most of the effort. Active preparation took only a modicum of time. Now the world watches for your self control. The world of your apartment kitchen, that is. The scents of garlic and thyme perfume your apartment, making it hard not to salivate every time you pass the oven on your way to the sink. You drink way more water than normal. And just when you think you can’t wait any longer, the timer buzzes.

The shriveled, tender tomatoes keep sizzling in the golden glow of olive oil as you take out the pan. With great care, you spoon a tomato onto a piece of sourdough toast. The final touch, flaky sea salt. Some people might think you’re crazy for waiting three hours for this meal. But you know the truth. Waiting makes it all the more delicious.

124 recipes cooked, 101 to go.

Perfect Asparagus with Garlic and Salted Olive Oil by Alison Roman

For every way to prepare great asparagus, there are at least eight ways to screw it up. I like asparagus, but the reason I don’t love it is because I’ve had far more asparagus-gone-wrong’s, than right’s. Too soggy, too tough, too stringy, too limp, too mushy – we’ve all made asparagus one or more of these ways. It’s easy to do! 

Alison claims that she’s found the *perfect* way to cook asparagus. In my opinion, she’s gotten pretty darn close. 

Alison’s asparagus method includes blanching the greens in a pot of boiling, salted water for 45 seconds (that’s it!). The asparagus must be on the thinner side for this to work. Not so thin that the top flops over, but not so thick that it doesn’t do a little wavering when you hold it up from the bottom. Once the 45 seconds are up, the asparagus can rest on a plate with paper towels to soak up excess water. Plate the greens and drizzle with a mixture of olive oil, salt, grated garlic and aleppo pepper, and of course, flaky sea salt. The flavor is subtle. The asparagus (asparagi?) are still crunchy, but not tough. They’re a beautiful bright green, and taste as fresh as they look…

The longer I think about it, the more I’m inclined to agree that it is the perfect asparagus. 

81 recipes cooked, 144 to go.