For a good time, get some caramelized onion jam

You can certainly also make some if you prefer.

Ortiz sardines. Photo by Popping Tins.

For years I’ve seen cans and jars of Ortiz-brand fish at good grocery stores, and for years I’ve avoided them. I have no issue with tuna, a fine fish if one I don’t eat often, but for whatever reason, small fillets of it jarred in oil have never appealed to me, and association with them—an association Ortiz has carried for me because of the shelving practices of a green grocer on 53rd St. in Chicago—has made me suspicious.

This changed a few weeks ago when I was in DiBruno Bros., the Philadelphia grocer, and a display of Ortiz sardines caught my eye. Some may say that can design isn’t a good reason to try a can of fish, but I disagree; while there are lots of excellent cans that have plain or unattractive designs, generally, nice designs go with nice fish, and I can in fact only think of one tin I bought due to the design that turned out to be bad, something I confirmed by trying it a second time and again finding mushy fish. While for years I’d rejected Ortiz, on this occasion the vivid primary colors overcame me, and I reasoned that if the sardines were bad they probably wouldn’t be so ubiquitous. We have to be open to change.

Of course the sardines were superb—plump, firm, and meaty, and packed in high-quality olive oil. The tin claims that these are prepared according to an original recipe from 1824; I see no reason to doubt that and would like to think it’s true, especially since the design of the can makes it look like something you’d see in the corner of an artist’s studio, preserved as it was 100 years ago. For the last few weeks these have been the only fish I’ve been eating, in part because they’re so good and in part because they’re one of the four or so brands Cleo, the new bagel shop in my neighborhood, carries, making them the best sardines you can get within a short walk from my house.

These are pretty big boys. Photo by Popping Tins.

While these are fine any way you want to have them, I’ve been having them with caramelized onion jam.

This is a tough time of year for me, because while I don’t make a religion of it, I do try and eat local, seasonal foods, partly because they’re better and partly because I like having a tangible connection to the natural cycles of death and rebirth around me. This is great when the peaches and berries are bursting and somewhat less so when, for the third month in a row, the choice is between beets, turnips, and rutabaga, along with ever less impressive apples. One solution, as it has been forever, is preserved food—pickles and ferments and plain old things canned out of the garden to add zing and zip to greens and piles of second-rate starch.

You could do worse for lunch, and I certainly have. Photo by Popping Tins.

As the skeptical looks a local onion enthusiast has given me when presented with caramelized onion jam have reminded me, the appeal of jelly made out of onions is perhaps not as obvious and intuitive to everyone as it is to me. I get mine at the farmer’s market from the same people I get my smoked garlic from, and it’s a real burst of flavor that can jazz anything up, smoky but bright with thyme and rosemary but also almost (though not quite) cloyingly sweet. A dollop on a whole sardine on a toast or swirled in pasta with sardines cooked with bread crumbs would go great, but I’ve been layering them on bagels and then lightly warming in the toaster oven. It doesn’t quite bring summer into the house, but does bring a bit of early fall, which I’ll take when staring at rutabaga and thinking about how the longest, deadest month of winter is yet to come.

Housekeeping

—The purpose of this newsletter is strictly to discuss tinned fish. At my day job, though, I’ve recently been covering the Vince McMahon sex-trafficking scandal, and I discussed it at length with my friend Tom Scocca for his newsletter, Indignity, which is certainly worth subscribing to; you can read that discussion here.

—Readers responded to the last issue’s call for tips on what to do with a tin of krill with many excellent suggestions. I still haven’t gotten over my fear of beady eyes and crunchy chitin, but I will sooner or later, and will try one or more reader ideas, many of which revolve around utilizing the krill to make thin, Korean-style pancakes. One thing I like about canned fish is that there’s absolutely no rush.