no. 77: robins and chickadees
I was filleting some sardines last week, and thinking about how I was holding my knife. The classic instruction is to hold your knife as you would a songbird, not so tightly as to crush it, not so loosely as to let it fly away. This pearl is usually handed down during your first week in the kitchen, when the only food you’re touching is vegetables, ideally ones which will later be mashed, and it’s the first and last thing many people ever hear about how to hold a knife.
Of course, it’s inadequate. The truth is that you treat your knife as your task demands. The same knife I hold like a tissue for sardines I hold like my first mug of coffee for a hake, or a pencil for slicing scallions. There’s maybe more difference in where your fingers fall than how tight they curl, in where the handle rests against your hand. Sometimes you focus on where you want the knife to go, sometimes it’s better to listen.
The sardines were caught in Portugal and flown over the same day, every week on Thursday. They come in fat and full, and this time of year their flesh looks like travertine. They have brilliant silver bellies and backs the color of the Atlantic off Getaria, and they’re the most vivid creatures in the fishmonger’s case (this is no slight on the rest of the fish).
You have to hold sardines very, very lightly, just touching them so your fingers can tell you where they are. It helps if your cutting board is clean, and your knife fine-tipped, so they’re less inclined to shimmy away. Grip the knife by the flat of its blade, using just one finger and your thumb. The handle should rest only against the edge of your hand. It’s not about cutting, but brushing the point of your knife along the fish’s back. Try and feel its spine, and the fillet will almost come off by itself.
Then you’ll need to take the fillet off the ribs. You can do this two ways. You can part the ribs from the spine simply by firming your grip on the knife – but when you do this you either have to slice the ribs off, or let your friends deal with your choices. The other way to do this, when the sardines have this autumnal solidity, is to pull it off the bones, leaving the ribs behind. This is a little heart-stopping, but it’s kinder to your eaters, and leaves the belly intact. Now you hold the fish like a lark, trusting in the flesh, making the fillet move once again, as though through water. It comes off the bones like a wave.
Sometimes it’s better to pull the bones from the flesh than the flesh from the bones. When the sardines are richer and softer than they were last week, or just smaller and not as well knit. You do this when you fillet sardines the classic way, using no implement but your thumbs. Not using a knife supposedly respects the flesh in its weakness, but perhaps my thumbs aren’t delicate enough. I don’t know anyone with thumbs like the tip of a knife.
My favorite way to cook sardines is to barely cook them at all. You salt the fillets and anoint them with olive oil, and lay them skin side down on a sizzle platter in an oven that’s still warmed by the memory of the last thing it cooked. Go drink some wine. Pay attention to your companions, or your book. Return when the sardines are still translucent. They should have relaxed in the heat, and not started worrying enough to tense up again. Any trace of opacity is a sign you’ve gone too far (as I did this time, because the company was so compelling, and the wine so good). Turn them over, very, very gently, torch the skins, and eat them on bread.