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Tinned fish recipes

February 11, 2023 Leave a Comment Filed Under: Food, Pescetarian, Recipes, Tinned food

Tinned fish is a pantry must – especially when you’ve got the builders in. My entire flat is covered in a thick layer of dust. Before creating these recipes I spent five hours cleaning my kitchen, up to about head-height anyway. I wasn’t going to do all the top shelves and plate racks because tomorrow it’ll all be covered in dust again.

So it’s snacks, toast, sandwiches, pot noodles, one-dish bakes and takeaways on the menu. It’s all I can cope with. I’m trying to work through my pantry supplies, trying to reduce the amount of stuff I own generally. I have tons of plates, cups, gadgets. Let me stand up and say: my name is Kerstin and I’m a kitchenware addict. I could start a prop shop for stylists. I’ve embarked on collections of vintage enamelware, cut crystal bowls, blue and white china, Portuguese cabbage ware. Every week I go to Portobello and buy something. It’s ridiculous, this ceramic lust.

Back to food and specifically tinned fish. I invest in Spanish and Portuguese tinned fish. Sometimes supermarkets like Lidl will stock Ortiz tuna cheaply, so that’s worth looking out for. And you should always have a jar of anchovies in the store cupboard. Anchovies have a long history of providing an umami boost to food: the Romans used garum, a fermented anchovy sauce, to spice up their dishes; fish sauce is widely used in Thai and Malaysian food.

If you can, buy Cantabrian anchovies, which are firm, dense and clean tasting. People think they don’t like anchovies, but what they’ve experienced is poor anchovies or too many anchovies, say on a pizza. A small amount perks up a dish or a sauce, so my advice for those cooking for the haters is to hide them.

Anchovies have multiple uses. Throw a couple plus a chilli pepper into a cooked tomato sauce and you have puttanesca for your pasta. Mince one into olive oil, mustard, garlic, lemon juice and coddled egg, and you have a caesar salad dressing.

Other store cupboard tinned essentials include tuna and sardines, but you can also explore more exotic fare such as tinned swordfish, smoked mussels and clams for an impromptu spag vong.

tinned fish recipes pix-Kerstin Rodgers - 1
tinned fish recipes pix-Kerstin Rodgers - 8
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Jansson’s Temptation

The correct anchovies to use with this dish are the Swedish slightly pickled ones, actually sprats, which can be found at Ocado or Swedish shops. But normal anchovies can be used as a replacement.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Swedish
Keyword Jansson's Temptation
Serves 6

Ingredients

  • unsalted butter to smear the baking tin
  • 1 clove garlic, cut in half and rubbed around your baking tin
  • 2 large brown onions, peeled and sliced thinly
  • 1 kg which is the equivalent of 5 medium peeled potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced
  • 500 ml single cream
  • 1 jar of salted anchovies or anchovies in oil OR, drained
  • 125 g tin Swedish anchovies (sprats) to be authentic, available at Ocado and Swedish shops

Instructions

  • Fry the onions till soft. Peel and slice the potatoes.
  • Prepare the baking tin with butter and garlic.
  • Layer the baking tin with neat overlapping rows of potato rounds. Do four layers and in-between add some of the fried onions. Salt each layer slightly. After the second layer, add half of the anchovies.
  • When finished, add 350ml of the cream.
  • Cover with foil and bake at 180ºC for 30 minutes until a fork goes through the potatoes easily. Add the rest of the cream and on top place the anchovies in criss-cross style. Uncover and bake for another 15 minutes.

Print

Sardines on toast

Remember when Sunday TV used to be so boring... hours of Songs of Praise and we had no choice, no Netflix, no Amazon, no BBC iplayer. My mum used to make this for us often on rainy Sunday afternoons, as a light tea.
Course Snack
Cuisine English
Keyword Sardines, Tinned fish, Tinned food
Serves 4

Ingredients

  • 120 g tin of sardines in olive oil, mashed
  • 1/2 lemon
  • 4 slices bread, toasted
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • sprig fresh mint leaves (optional)

Instructions

  • Mash the sardines, oil and lemon juice together in a bowl.
  • Toast the bread both sides.
  • Put a heaped tablespoon on each slice and garnish with pepper and lemon juice, and mint leaves if you wish.

Print

Tuna salad sandwich

We tend to have tuna sandwiches with sweetcorn or cucumber in the UK. I like the American style tuna salad sandwich, which is mixed with mayonnaise and a pickle such as finely sliced cocktail gherkins. It's simple, quick and rather addictive.
Usually I'd say buy a good Spanish or Portuguese brand of tuna but the mayonnaise makes even the cheapest tuna taste good.
You can swap out the gherkins for silver skin onions, or pickled green peppercorns or capers. You can build in a crisp lettuce leaf to the sandwich or slices of cucumber to add crunch.
Course Lunch, Sandwich, Snack
Cuisine American
Keyword Tinned fish, Tinned food, Tuna salad sandwich, tuna steak
Serves 2

Ingredients

  • 4 slices of the bread of your choice, spread with mayonnaise
  • 160 g tin of tuna, packed in water but in oil is fine too
  • 5 tbsps mayonnaise
  • 1/2 small brown or red onion, thinly sliced
  • 5 mini gherkins, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 lemon, juice of
  • plenty of pepper and a little salt.

Instructions

  • Prepare your bread slices
  • Mix the tuna with the rest of the ingredients. Cover and chill if not using immediately.
  • Add heaped tablespoons of the tuna salad into the centre of your bread slice, spread thickly, and close with the other slice of bread. Cut in half.

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  1. sidesist

    March 16, 2023 at 3:10 am

    This dish looks so tempting! Sounds like a must-try! Thanks for sharing. 🙂

    Reply

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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msmarmitelover

Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam. Rose Appl Apple rose blossom tarts with rose jam.  Rose Apple Blossom Tarts

Serves 8

Equipment: 
Microwave
Cupcake or muffin tin

I use a red-skinned apple to make these, to get a hint of blush at the edges of the ‘petals’.

Ingredients:
4 Pink Lady or Royal Gala apples, cored, cut into quarters, sliced thinly into half moons
1 lemon, squeezed
1 pack all butter readymade puff pastry 320g, on a roll, cut into 8 strips about 6 cms long
100g of melted butter
1/2 jar of rose jam
1 or 2 tbsp cinnamon or cardamom, ground 
Pinch maldon salt
2 or 3 tbsp icing sugar

Instructions

Prepare a bowl of acidulated water (cold water with lemon juice) to prevent browning.
Core the apples, and cut them in quarters. Slice thinly into half-moons (a mandolin is useful for this). 
Put them into a large bowl of cold water with the lemon.
Microwave the bowl of sliced apples for 5 minutes until soft enough to bend slightly but not cook them.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Roll out the puff pastry. Divide into 8 sections by cutting the roll into quarters then halving each quarter. You will end up with 8 approximately 6cm strips.
Brush the strip with melted butter then paint with a layer of rose jam. You can then dust with either ground cinnamon or cardamom.
Lay the apple slices along the top of the pastry strip, overlapping them. Fold up the bottom half of the pastry strip to make an pleat with the skin side of the apple half moon poking over the top.
Roll up the folded pastry strips until they look like a rose made of apple at the top
Place ‘rose’ side up, in a buttered cupcake tin
Repeat until all are done and bake for 20 -30 minutes.
Using a tea strainer or small sieve, sprinkle with icing sugar.
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