Anchovies: let the love-hate love-in begin
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Version 0 of 1. No matter what else is in my cupboard, I try to make sure I have at least one jar or can of anchovies. They are not universally loved, but few powerful things are. The key to making them as useful as they can be is knowing how to exercise their power well. They contain enough potency in their tiny preserved selves to do most of what needs doing. Anchovies divide us into lovers and fighters. No one is neutral. The little fish elicit wistful gazes from their adorers – if you love them you wonder when you will get your next one – and shudders from objectors (far more numerous), who can’t fathom the injustice of ever having to see one of the nasty things again. If you have ever tasted a good anchovy, you will know that nastiness is not in the fish’s nature. Freshly caught and gutted, their tiny tails left on, then quickly packed into salt, they are meaty, beautiful little things. When you open a jar or tin of them, their thick salt smell is the first thing that escapes. Once they’ve been soaked for 10 minutes in warm water, they emerge, tails and fins still attached, whole, looking very much like they did when they were first pulled from water. These anchovies, when stripped of their bones and tails, have a depth that can only come from deep in the dark sea. The best anchovies will have been preserved in salt. Ten minutes before you’re planning to cook with them, dig the number of anchovies you want out of their salt and soak them in a bowl of water until they’ve begun to soften and their salt rubs off easily. Store any anchovies that you’ve filleted and not used by completely submerging them in olive oil. Not enough of us do this, which accounts for the matt pallor of the fillets that show up flumped on top of our caesar salads. Or buy the best olive-oil-packed fillets you can. This precious oil the anchovies are stored in is an ingredient. I add it to anything I’m using the fish themselves in, or to a pasta sauce that will have fish in it, but equally to a pan of roasting vegetables. A good way to get anchovies’ dense, rosy little selves to show what they can do is to make bagna cauda. This dip, the name of which means “warm bath”, is made with anchovies melted in olive oil and butter. It’s a lovely way to start a meal and is incredibly economical. The contents of a single jar of anchovies make enough for a big group of people. Fill a plate with sliced boiled potatoes, thin wedges of raw cabbage, wedges of soft-boiled egg, lightly boiled celery, and leaves of endive, then spoon the rich sauce over each one as you eat it. Tamar Adler is a food writer based in New York. This is an edited extract from The Everlasting Meal (Scribner, a division of Simon and Schuster) @tamaradler |