Tonight’s dinner was the delightful product of serendipity and greed. I was feeling restless when I woke up this morning, so headed out for a jaunt on the bike, planning to follow the river around New Farm and out to Newstead House. I footled over there (via various detours), lazed about on the hilly lawns for a while watching the calm river and the less calm sporty people dashing along its banks, then got back as far as the Powerhouse, where I found the path blocked off for the weekend markets.<\/p>\n
I totally intended to wheel my way around the edge of the markets and get home for a shower, when my eye was caught by a stall selling early cherries. Stonefruit is the one<\/em> thing – the only thing – I like about Brisbane summers, and the good stuff is just starting to show up now. I was caught in the cherries’ tractor beam and found myself buying half a kilo before I was fully aware of what I was doing. Once having pushed into the crowd while wheeling my bike, I figured I might as well press on through, and manfully (ha!) resisted buying the several dozen other delicious but unnecessary things that caught my eye… until I got to the fishmonger. I’ve been craving sardines for weeks. Screw the meals I’d planned for the weekend, those sardines were coming home with me. And they did. I escaped without further purchases (except for two small buffalo mozarella, which can be squeezed into the planned meals quite nicely, alright?), and spent an enjoyable afternoon planning how I was going to eat the first few fillets.<\/p>\n In the end I decided to make something almost precisely like this salad<\/a> of Helen’s, sans anchovies. I love julienned zucchini (especially since Matt and Leonie gave me a julienne peeler so I no longer need to brave the terrifying mandoline<\/a>) and this combination is crispy, fresh, and sharp, the perfect complement to some quickly panfried sardines.<\/p>\n <\/span> 1 medium zucchini, julienned finely 1 small clove garlic, crushed fresh butterflied sardines (I ate 6 small and thin ones) Toss the zucchini, herbs, capers and cornichons together in a bowl. Make the dressing by combining the garlic, mustard and lemon juice, then whisking in olive oil to emulsify. Combine salad and dressing well.<\/p>\n Heat a frypan over moderate heat, and add a little olive oil. Fry the sardine fillets until just done – mine took 2 minutes on the skin side followed by about 40 seconds on the other side.<\/p>\n Plate up the sardines, salad and bread, and eat at once. Divine. Fresh cherries for dessert just make it even better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight’s dinner was the delightful product of serendipity and greed. I was feeling restless when I woke up this morning, so headed out for a jaunt on the bike, planning to follow the river around New Farm and out to Newstead House. I footled over there (via various detours), lazed about on the hilly lawns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,3,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.woolfit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSardine dinner for one<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n1 handful parsley leaves, torn
\n1 handful mint leaves, torn
\n2 teaspoons salted capers, soaked and drained
\n8 tiny cornichons, cut into slices<\/p>\n
\n1\/2 teaspoon or so seed mustard
\njuice of half a small lemon
\ntop quality olive oil<\/p>\n
\ngood bread (a ficelle from Chouquette in this case)<\/p>\n