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You are here: Home Leisure Dining & Cuisine Summer recipes: sardines and side-salad

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05/07/2010Summer recipes: sardines and side-salad

Summer recipes: sardines and side-salad Our resident cook, la Tante Pioulette, continues with suggestions of some easy to prepare and convival cold dishes which can be served together as a refreshing summer dinner treat.

At Expatica, we're celebrating the arrival of summer in true Gallic style with a week of cool daily recipes with a touch of the exotic.

Our resident cook, la Tante Pioulette brings you more Mediterranean flavours with a dish of seasonal raw fish and a cumin-lifted side salad using broad beans or chickpeas.

Raw and marinated sardines à la Tante Pioulette
Ingredients for six

- 12 fresh sardines (if possible, only the boneless filets). Buy only from a fishmongers where you know the quality and freshness is excellent.
- 15 cl of fine strawberry vinegar
- 2 garlic cloves
- 4 large lemons
- 2 onions
- 10 cl of dry white wine
- a sprig of parsley
- Olive oil

If you are using whole sardines, chop off the heads and split the fish down the length of their bellies. Empty all the innards, working the way back to the tail. Brush off the scales under running cold water.


Lay them skin-side up on a board and push firmly with fingers along the central bone. Turn them over and and pull away the bone, starting by tugging from the flesh from where the head was cut. You now have filets. Wash your prepared, or bought, filets gently and briefly under running water.

Cut the onions length-wise into thin slices. Mix the wine and strawberry-vinegar in a large cup.

Place the filets flat in a wide glass bowl, covering each one with the slices of onion and a dash of evenly poured vinegar and wine, rubbing in gently.

Cover and leave in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Remove the onions and lightly rinse the fish, drying the filets with a dab of kitchen paper.

Wash the parsley and chop roughly. Finely hash the garlic. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into a cup.

Spread the filets flat across a wide serving plate and add a light dose of salt and pepper.

Evenly pour on the lemon juice, taking care to use it sparingly. Sprinkle the filets with the parsley and garlic and add a drop of olive oil over each. Serve chilled.

Chickpeas or broad beans in cumin and garlic
Ingredients for six

- 1 kilo of chickpeas (if bought ready-cooked, this is the equivalent of two large cans) OR fresh broad beans
- 3 - 4 wine glasses of olive oil
- 2 level soup spoons of ground cumin
- 1 soup spoon of fresh and hashed coriander leaves
- 2 garlic cloves
- salt and pepper

This is an exotic side-dish, but very simple to prepare. The easiest, though less fine-tasting, version of this recipe is to use ready-cooked chickpeas, emptied into a colander and rinsed briefly in cold water. Dry off. Pour them into a bowl, large enough for them to fill just half, and pour on the olive oil. Carefully sprinkle the cumin over the chickpeas, deeply but gently mixing (so as not to crush), until all the peas are coated. Add a liberal dose of salt and, if needed, a light portion of pepper. Place in the refrigerator.


Shortly before serving, wash the coriander leaves and separate from their branches. Chop them crudely. Chop the garlic into very - very - fine pieces. Remove the bowl for when cold, but not chilled, and add the garlic and coriander, stirring thoroughly. Serve immediately.

If you are using fresh broad beans or dried chickpeas: same steps as above, after preparing the beans or chickpeas as follows:

broad beans: remove from pods and cook in boiling water for five minutes. Rinse and cool under cold water. Remove the thick outer skin by squeezing the bean out using thumb and forefinger.

dried chickpeas: soak overnight in twice their volume of water, rinse then place in a pan filled with cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Salt to taste 10 minutes from the end of cooking time.

Expatica 2010
photo credits: flickr contributors Jude Doyland and FotoosVanRobin

The article was first published in 2003


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