Sardine Fish Cakes

I made this dish a few weeks ago, but am just now getting around to blogging about it after going through the photos.

While shopping for the ingredients for the Ditri Family Stuffed Mushrooms, my brother Treffly accidentally brought home sardines instead of anchovies. Seeing them sitting there in the fridge made me want to figure out something to do with them, so I did some cursory research (on the Internet, of all places) and found a recipe that looked appealing.

Some people just eat sardines on bread or with crackers. This thought might disgust some people. Not me. I could see myself enjoying them like this, but I wanted to go with something a little more refined, so I decided to give fish cakes a try.

Now, I love a good crab cake. It's been awhile since I've had a good one, which is a shame since there should be some mighty fine cakes to be had here in So-Cal. I'll have to look into it. The best crab cake I've had in recent memory was at an English joint in Chicago. When I stumbled upon a fish cake recipe using the tinned sardines I had, I was intrigued. So with a few minor adjustments, I was ready to give it a try. Here's what you'll need:

Sardines
Potatoes
Garlic
Onions
Fresh Dill
Lemon
Eggs
Flour
Cayenne Pepper
Panko Bread Crumbs
Red Chard
Red Kale
Goat Cheese

These fish cakes, like many fine dishes, start off with the humble potato. We'll be mashing them up to form the cakes with, so first start by peeling them and cubing them up.

What's taters? In the words of the fine hobbit Samwise Gamgee, "Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew." Actually, just boil 'em, mash 'em, and stick 'em in a bowl. No stew today, Mr. Frodo.

Other things that will be going into the mix will include the sardines themeselves, flour, and egg. Also, we'll be adding onion, garlic, and fresh dill. Let's start with those since they require a little help.

While you're boilin' yer taters, get your onion ready. (These pictures are not in chronological order.) Inside the cakes will be onion, but you can't just incorporate raw onion into the mix. So grab an onion and dice it.

Heat up some oil in a pan and start sweating them.

Adjust seasoning as you go, and mince up your garlic, adding it into the pan after a few minutes.

While those are getting some color, grab your sardines.

This was my first time working with sardines. After tasting them, I was somewhat impressed. They were actually pretty good, but you can only expect so much from fish crammed into a small tin. If I made these cakes again, I would spring for some fresh fish to use, as I think the added cost would be worth it. For now, let's pop these suckers open and see what we're dealing with.

There's tiny little pin bones in these guys, but they sort of just disintegrate on their own. No need to do anything to them except chop them up nice and fine and incorporate them into your mashed potatoes.

At this point, all you have to show for your hard work is a bland, fishy tasting, mix. But don't fret; the other ingredients will enhance the flavor and the sardine fishiness will actually only be subtle in the final product. Let's check on our onions and garlic.

They're looking fantastic as planned. Go ahead and dump them into your mix.

Now, grab your fresh dill. Unless you have a dill plant growing, you'll want to buy fresh dill from the store. It doesn't seem to last as long as other fresh herbs, sadly, before it turns, so use it or lose it. Still, it is quite beautiful is it not? Remove the thicker stems and chop it up.

It taste like pickles! Or, more accurately, pickles taste like dill. That's why they call them dill pickles! The more you know! Dump it in your mix.

Next, take a lemon and grate some zest into the mixture. Use a lot of zest. Lemon and fish are two flavors that go together brilliantly.

Go ahead and mix all the ingredients together well. This is the time to taste it and make sure your seasoning is right, because we'll be adding flour and raw egg in the next step, and you won't want to taste it after that. In my case, I had to add a lot more salt than I thought I would. Unlike anchovies, the sardines are not heavily salted. I also added more dill because I found that it wasn't prominent enough.

Now take your flour and egg and add them in to bind everything together and firm it up.

With eggs, always crack them on a flat surface. I had been using the edge of a bowl or something to crack them until I learned better. It's much easier to get a clean crack on a flat surface. This is important for when you want to use the shells to separate the yolk from the egg whites. This time, just dump it in a bowl and whisk it up with a fork.

Now mix in the egg and keep adding flour until you wind up with a mixture that holds together reasonably well.

Prepare your crunchy coating. Panko bread crumbs work great because they get so nice and crispy. They are quite bland on their own, however. I like to mix panko with cayenne pepper whenever I use it. This is a popular combination, give it a try! I also used a bit of black pepper in the mix. The end result will be a crunchy cake with a bit of kick to it.

This next part is messy, so make some room. Use your mix, another whisked egg, a bowl of flour, and a bowl of your prepared panko bread crumbs to set up a work station. Form small patties with your fish cake mix, then coat them with flour. Next, dip them in the egg, and finally coat them with the bread crumbs. This mix turned out to be rather delicate (see my final thoughts below) so I had to be very careful to keep them from falling apart.

The cakes are finally ready for cooking, but first let's prepare the accompaniments. First, let's make a sauce that will go over the top of the final product. If you've read my previous post about making burgers, this sauce will be familiar. I've slightly modified it to better compliment fish cakes. So grab the following:

Mayo
Sriracha
Cayenne Pepper
Dijon Mustard
Brown Rice Vinegar
Soy Sauce
Lemon Juice

The main components are the mayo, sriracha, and mustard. Add two parts mayo, one part sriacha, one part mustard. Drizzle in just a touch of soy sauce and vinegar. Sprinkle in a dash of red pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice and mix it all together. You'll end up with a cunning combination of culinary condiments that will compliment your cakes.

Now we'll make a quick wilted salad to serve the fish cakes on. I chose red chard and red kale to combine, but you could just as easily use spinach, or whatever else speaks out to you while shopping. The "greens" I chose were both "reds" which I thought might be a cool combination. They are both actually quite good for you and high in vitamins and minerals. But don't worry; by the time we're done with them they will have been sauteed in garlic and oil, salted, and garnished with rich cheese.

First, let's look at our red chard. This is a robust and beautiful leaf. Look at how pretty it is!

Keep in mind while chopping it up into salad sized pieces that, while the stems are edible if cooked properly, they can be super tough if you don't do it right. For the purposes of this dish, it's better to simply remove them altogether and not bother with them.

Now onto the kale. This is another strong leaf, and the flavor follows suit. It also can be healthy for you if you don't do to it what I am about to. Chop it down to size, but keep it separate from your chard since you'll not need to cook it for quite as long.

Finally, take some more garlic and give it a rough chop. If you recall from an earlier post of mine, we'll cook these leaves similar to how I prepared the spinach for my Ma La Fish.

First add oil into the pan and season it while it's warming up. It's easier to add the salt now and let it coat evenly than it is to add salt at the end. Then, toss in the garlic once the oil is hot enough, but be careful not to let it get so hot as to burn.

Next, add in the chard. Unlike spinach, chard is sturdy enough to not easily over wilt. Mix it around and cook it down a little.

After a minute or two, it's time to add in the kale. Now you will have a time limit, because you don't want to over cook the kale.

Stir it around for just another minute or two. Right before you take it out of the pan sprinkle in just a touch of sugar. I mentioned in my other post that you can add sesame oil at this time (when I did this with spinach) but we'll skip this step for now because we'll be lightly dressing the salad when it's on the plate.

The dressing is nothing more than a mixture of peanut oil, and more brown rice vinegar, with plenty of black pepper ground in. Mix it up and set it aside for now. Unless you blitz it, you'll probably have to mix it up again before applying to the salad on the plate.

At long last, we can start cooking the fish cakes. You'll likely have to add more oil to the pan. Also crank up the heat to medium-high since we'll want to get some nice color on these. Gently place you cakes into the hot oil. Be sure to be careful not to break them. After they start to crisp a little, they become much easier to handle.

Three or four minutes on each side is all it will take. When they're brown and crispy, they are ready to go.

Now for plating! Place down your greens. Hopefully they'll still be slightly warm, because the next step is to add a bit of crumbled goat cheese on top that will sort of just slightly melt right in. Very LIGHTLY dress the greens with the prepared vinaigrette. You don't need very much of the stuff, as there is already a lot going on in this dish and too much dressing will overpower the other, more subtle flavors.

With the fried garlic and cheese this looks good enough to eat just by itself, doesn't it? Now delicately place the cooked fish cakes on top of the salad and drizzle your sauce over the top. Finally, top it with a lemon wedge. A little extra lemon flavor goes really well with this dish!

Over all, I was well pleased with the end result. The breading was crispy, and the cake was soft and flavorful. The sauce went well with the cakes, and the salad was warm and light. Squeezing a small bit of lemon juice over the top of it all added just enough flavor and really kept it clean tasting.

There are, however, a few things I would change if I made these again. First of all, instead of using sardines, I would buy a cheap fresh fish to incorporate into the mix. I would lightly fry it until it was flaky and delicious and then use that instead of the tinned fish. Also, instead of mashing the potatoes I would (as my brother suggested) grate them into a hash. I think this would help the cakes hold together more firmly and the final product would boast a more pleasant texture. Finally, I would have included additional finely chopped fresh dill into the sauce itself for even more dill flavor.

When it comes down to it, I need to do some more reading on making this type of food. Probably next time, I will make crab cakes, but I intend to research it more thoroughly so I'm able to make proper cakes that hold their shape well. Despite my own critiques, please don't get the wrong idea. These fish cakes were damn delicious!