Like a yawn, cravings are passed on. Almost anyone that spends time reading food blogs will at some time suffer from this culinary side effect. All it takes is one long look at a mouthwatering on-line photo and the craving is practically downloaded like an attachment.
Cravings, that undeniable hunger for a specific ingredient, are something I’ve been experiencing a lot lately. It seems that the more time I spend food blog hopping, the more I experience these acute longings for the strangest dishes. For weeks, I was tortured with the need to devour handfuls of home made granola after reading a post on Orangette. After a lifetime of fearing dessert making, my food-blog inspired craving motivated me to make a pot au crème from scratch. After eating a particular butternut squash dish in Italy, I spend a week buying different kinds of cheeses in hopes of perfecting the recipe, post about it and then, a few days later, discovered I had passed on my unique squash craving to a fellow foodie. And now, for the first time in a lifetime of cravings, I can’t get the idea of a sardine sandwich out of my head.
Sardines?
Yeah. I couldn’t believe it either. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I read Mattbites post on sardines. Fishy, up to this point of my life, has never been a word I’d use to describe any food I yearn for. But thanks to the Internet, things change fast.
But here I am, with the unmistakeable smell of sardine oil on my fingers, to tell you about the sardine sandwich that saved me from my non-stop culinary distraction.
With a craving for sardines firmly implanted in my mind, I set out for the Hollywood farmer’s market in search of ingredients for the perfect sandwich. While there, I stumbled upon a hydroponic farmer selling bags of perfect greens and herbs.
Their baby celery was unlike any celery I had ever seen before. It was so light and leafy, it almost passed as a bag of cilantro. Besides being mostly all leaves, it had thin, pencil-lead sized stalks that when sliced, created perfect little squares of color, like a thinly chopped chive. I had found the perfect center point for my long awaited sardine sandwich.
Sardine and market-fresh celery and radish salad sandwich
makes 2 servings
Half a baguette (or any other crusty bread)
1/2 cup chopped celery leaves and stalks of hydroponic celery (or, using a normal celery plant, use ¼ cup celery leaves and a ¼ cup thinly sliced celery stalks)
2 thinly sliced and halved radishes.
4 tablespoons of good olive oil
2 tablespoons of a great tasting, aged red wine vinegar
At least 1 can of sardines
salt and pepper to taste
Mix the chopped celery and radish in a bowl. Mix in the oil and vinegar and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Open face style is the easiest way to eat this sandwich, but you should cut your baguette any way you like. Add a heaping tablespoon of celery radish salad to the bread and top with one to two sardine filets. Sprinkle with salt and devour until your craving is satisfied.
