Recipe: how to use breadcrumbs to transform a summer supper
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Ravinder Bhogal has a way of making breadcrumbs surprisingly appealing. Her recipe for butter bean aglio e olio topped with anchovy-laced pangrattato was a big hit with readers back in January. Here, sourdough breadcrumbs form the basis of a salsa that tastes incredibly fresh given it contains so many store cupboard ingredients. Eat as an early dinner somewhere sunny, and get ready to add “putting dried fruit in salsa” to the list of things Ravinder can convince you of.
To drink
This recipe was written on the back of a trip to Sicily, and Ravinder suggests a fresh white wine from one of the region’s natural growers such as Arianna Occhipinti’s SP68.
Substitutions
You can use sultanas instead of currants. Red wine vinegar or other shallots will work if necessary. Tinned sardines will make something tasty but different.
Tip
Stale bread is “excellent made into pangrattato for topping fish pastas where you might not want to use parmesan”, says Ravinder. (Traditionally, it is a heresy to combine cheese and fish pasta.) If you are using tinned rather than fresh sardines, Ravinder suggests this should in fact be served as a pasta dish: toss the finished dish with spaghetti.
Ravinder Bhogal’s sardines with breadcrumb salsa
To serve two
For the breadcrumb salsa
Begin by making the salsa. In a small bowl combine the currants and shallot. Scatter over the oregano, salt and pepper, and pour over three tablespoons of the olive oil and the vinegar and mix well.
Leave to steep for a minimum of half an hour, but you could do this even overnight.
Roughly chop the bread into chunks, and put it in a food processor to make coarse breadcrumbs. In a large frying pan, heat the remaining olive oil and then add the garlic and breadcrumbs and fry over a low heat for around 10 minutes, until the bread crisps up. Set aside to cool. Toast the pine nuts in the pan.
In a bowl combine the tomatoes, capers, pine nuts, parsley and cooled breadcrumbs, then spoon over the salsa and leave to sit while you fry the sardines.
Season the sardines with salt and pepper, and drizzle over olive oil. Heat a pan until very hot and then fry the sardines skin side down for two to three minutes. Carefully turn over, take the pan off the heat and let them cook in the residual heat for a further two minutes. Serve with the salsa and scatter with lemon zest. If you are using tinned sardines, do not heat them.
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