Venetian style Sardines in Savor (Marinated Fried Sardines)
Marinated sardines is a classic and quintessentially Venetian dish, where sardines are lightly fried and then marinated in onion and vinegar mixture. It is prepared and found on Venetian menus (Sarde in saòr) where typical humble dishes are served all year round The name of the dish comes from the Venetian word saòr, meaning sapore in standard Italian, which translates as flavour, and refers to the fact that the flavour of the marinated fish is elevated by the use of good quality wine vinegar.
This dish originated simply out of necessity, when the catch of the fish was particularly abundant and plentiful, people had to figure out how to preserve food to be able to eat it for days without going bad, as the refrigeration had not yet been invented.
This Venetian dish in origin is also very popular and became a staple dish along the coast of the Slovenian Istra, where local gastronomy was strongly shaped and influenced by the Venetian cuisine, and this is of no surprise, as this land was once part of The Republic of Venice who “left behind” the recipe for marinated sardines and enriched the food habits of the locals, who refer to this dish as Sardele in savor (Sardele na šavor in standard Slovenian) and serve it as a cold starter or sometimes as main. It is made all year round but particularly pleasant to eat cold during the hot summer months due to its refreshing taste.
Unlike the Venetian variety of this dish, Istrian marinated sardines do not include the use of pine nuts or raisins, testimony to the introduction of expensive and unusual ingredients in noble Venice due to a its strong trading activity with the East.
More humble and poorer Istrian variation, to offer extra flavour to this dish, introduced the use of fresh parsley and Mediterranean herbs like rosemary and bay leaves growing in abundance along the coast, instead of pine nuts and raisins, difficult to find and expensive, and therefore out of reach for most households. This variation also introduced the use of red wine vinegar, home made and produced in most households, instead of white wine vinegar, type of vinegar solely used in Venetian recipe.
This dish is customarily made with sardines (small ones are particularly suitable) but can be made with other types of fish like sprats, called papaline (Venetian word) by the locals and mackerel being most popular and most common alternative to sardines, and fillets of more prestigious fish like sea bream and sea bass can also be considered.
Once, this was food for the poor, nowadays is a delicacy and a speciality very much appreciated for their unique flavour and highly valued for nutritional content, especially in Slovenian Istra, where, unlike in Venice, this dish, although very traditional in the area, is not easily available in the restaurants, but almost exclusively made in the households.
My nona told me a lovely story, when she was only twenty two years old and got married she moved into the house, where she still currently lives, not very far away from the sea, and during the hot summer nights, the windows would be kept wide open in the hope to get some fresh breeze from the sea to cool the bedrooms to make it easier to sleep.
She could very clearly hear, in the middle of the night, the sound of very small fishing boats leaving the port and going out in the open sea to fish, this is the sound that she remembers as a very special and nostalgic one, and this is because she can no longer hear these sounds, as the majority of those small boats were replaced by only few commercial bigger fishing boats. These days they struggle for a few big catches since over the years the the sea has been depleted of fish. Sadly, fishing has become very difficult and complicated, and so is not very appealing to the younger generations.
I am sharing here my nona's recipe, this is the dish she grew up with, and the one she recalls was also made by her grandmother. This is a traditional, local and authentic family recipe for Istrian style marinated sardines. However, if you wish to “jazz up” this recipe a bit, and make it more “noble” and Venetian, you can add 50g of pine nuts and 50g raisins (previously soaked in lukewarm water for few minutes to help them become more plump).
Ingredients
Serves 4-6
1 kg very fresh sardines, cleaned (scaled, gutted, heads and central bone removed and butterflied)
(ask fishmonger to prepare them for you if uncomfortable with the task)
all purpose flour (quantity enough to flour the sardines)
400 ml frying oil
5 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
500 g onions, peeled and thinly sliced
5 whole black peppercorns
1 Tbsp white dry breadcrumbs
100 ml white or red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf, fresh or dry
1 small fresh rosemary spring
very generous pinch of fresh flat leaf parsley (about 2g), finely chopped
sea salt
Method
Cut the heads of the sardines, gut them and remove the central bone. Butterfly the sardines, rinse them well under cold running water and pat dry thoroughly with the kitchen paper.
Coat them in flour and shake off flour in excess.
Place frying oil in a frying pan, heat it up and fry gently and quickly the sardines, 2 minutes on each side is sufficient. They should have a light, not very crunchy, coating coating.
Drain well on a kitchen paper.
Season well with sea salt and set aside.
Peel the onions and slice them thinly.
In a separate frying pan, ideally non stick, put extra virgin olive oil and heat a bit.
Add the onions and cook them on a very gentle heat until they become very soft and translucent, stirring often to avoid getting too brown.
Add black peppercorns, breadcrumbs, bay leaf, small fresh rosemary spring, finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley.
Pour in wine vinegar and enough water to completely cover the onion mixture.
Cook the onion and vinegar mixture on a gentle heat for about 20 minutes. The sauce should slightly thicken and reduce a little, but you should still be left with quite a bit of liquid.
If too much liquid has evaporated during the cooking add a bit more water.
Take a serving dish and alternate layers of onions in the vinegar mix and fried sardines.
Repeat the process of layering until the dish is full. The number of layers will depend on the size of your serving dish but the last layer should be onion and vinegar mix.
If you are left with a bit of vinegary liquid from the onion mixture just pour it over the layers.
Place the dish in a fridge or a cool place for at least 24 hours or a couple of days, so the sardines marinate well and absorb all the flavours.
The longer you leave to marinate the better it will taste, but bare in mind that the fish will keep for up to a week.
