WILD PASTA WITH TINNED LUXURY SARIDNES

During my childhood tinned sardines were merely part of the emergency ration on our sailing boat and hidden deep down under in the dry food box. Afterwards on my first trips to Italy and France at the age of 15 – for sure living in a tent:-) – we discovered some very fine tinned sardines and ate them with wonderful fresh bread and enjoyed a deep red wine with them sitting at the seaside watching the sunset. One of my real fish favourites at that time during these trips became fresh little fried sardines with lemon and fleur de sel, a wonderful simple delicacy, prefereably eaten fresh at the seaside. The tinned sardines didn´t give up and came back to me in my late twens, travelling over six weeks through portugal with a long stay in Lisbon. In this wonderful city which became one of my absolutely favourite ones I discovered shops with an unbelievable variety of very nice fish tins containing amongst others wonderful sardines. Henceforward tinned sardines have been on the fringes of my culinary life. But then suddenly one of my favourite gourmet food shops in Berlin, Maître Philippe & Filles, www.maitrephilippe.de, fantastic vendors of mostly french cheese, wine and deli food discovered their so far hidden addiction to tinned sardines and now offer an enourmous range of tasty, lovely design collections of different fish tins from Portugal, France... – even differentiated by age groups. After I tasted a few boxes I discovered my absolute favourite ones – and they are French:-))): from la compagnie bretonne du poisson and called "Jahrgangssardine 2014 (Michael Weston, he is the English artist living in Brittany and responsible for the wonderful tin design)". Even the harbour and the ship is mentioned on the tin. Voilà.

If you work with strong, very tasty ingredients like tinned sardines it is good to add a few companions to let the dominant taste evolve more facettes. For my beloved tinned sardines I choose shallots, caper, lemon, black pepper, red chili, parsley, a bit of fresh spearmint and a mature parmesan. You can cook this dish very quickliy but it tastes much better if you give it a bit more time.

What you need for 2 guests

• 200 grammes Spaghettini (very thin Spaghetti)

• 1 sardine tin "Jahrgangssardine 2014 (Michael Weston)"

• 300 grammes of shallots

• 1 little red chili pepper in a whole, do not open it!!!

• 1 very small half clove of garlic

• 8 table spoons of good mild olive oil

• 1 small glass of little capers

• Fresh black pepper, crunshed in a mortar

• Sea salt, if possible not bleached 

• 5 branches of parsley

• 5 little spearmint leaves

• 100 grammes of fresh raped mature parmesan

• ... and a dash of lemon juice

How to do it

Open the sardine tin only a little bit at first and drop the oil into a pan. Ad the olive oil. Peel the shallots and the garlic and cut them into ver fine pieces. Ad the red chili and the black pepper and steam the ingredients very slowly, lid half on. They should not become brown! Add the dripped off and fine cut capers and the sardines, take out the chili, stir once and turn off the heat. Add the fine sliced herbs and close the lid. If you have the time let it rest for one hour or two.

Cook the Spaghettini al dente, turn the heat on your sardine pan again and add the dripped off pasta into the pan, mixe it carefully under the sardine sauce and add a very littel dash of frehs lemon juice to finish. Serve it on deep plates and spread the fine raped parmesan over your pasta. Choose a strong white wine aside this wonderful fish dish. As a sauvignon lover I always often take a strong one with this dish. A carefully chosen raw sauvignon could also go perfectly with it as well as a strong rosé. Bonne appetit!

dolce vita ahoi! 
monika ebert • mobile minds

HOMEMADE PISTACHIO SPREAD

Four days ago I got a wonderful present from friends who visited Sicily. Seven fresh lemons picked right form the tree, a sweet tomato jam and a pistachio spread. Marvellous! But I wanted to enhance the pisatchio taste of the spread and further more I wanted it to taste less sweet.

Thought. Done. I went to a turkish market in Kreuzberg and bought 400 grammes of first class unpeeled pistachio. It took me a long time to pull the nuts out of their peel, I nearly fell into a kind of peeling meditaion.-) From another friend of mine I lately got a very nice pistachio oil and these two ingredients were my basis for the spread.

Then I thought about a few little natural enhancers to turn my pistachio spread into something harmonic though inspiring and well flavoured result. I decided to add a bit of my home-dried orange peel and roughly chopped organic deep dark chocolate (90% should be the best).

You need

400 grams of first class pistachio with peel
3 soup spoons of pistachio oil
1 tea spoon of agave nectar, more if you like it sweeter
1 tea spoon of brown sugar
1 soup spoon of homemade orange peel, choppend into very, very tiny pieces
1 glimpse of fresh vanilla to enhance everything
40 grams of roughly chopped dark chocolate (90%)

How to do it

Put the peeled pistachio with the oil into a blender and mix it until you get a smooth cream. Add the orange peel, the brown sugar, the agave nectar and mix it again for 5 minutes.
In the end you add the chocolate – bit do no use the blender again! Stir it with a spoon. Best is to let it rest for one night. Afterwards eat it as fresh as possible and do not keep it for a long time. But according to my experience that should not be a problem:-)

dolce vita ahoi! 
monika ebert • mobile minds