Sometimes, shopping at the seafood counter can be a swim in uncharted waters. Recommendations seem to change on a daily basis; salmon, tuna, cod, shrimp are safe one day — and toxic the next.
But the humble canned sardine is always there, nutritious, safe and sustainable. So we challenged Top Chef Carla Hall to do the (almost) impossible and make sardines tasty, too.
It was a real challenge: Hall doesn't like sardines. At all. In fact, she tells NPR's Guy Raz she hasn't eaten them since childhood, and has never tried to cook them. "Oftentimes, I'm making things for other people, and they'll say they don't like something, and I will say, 'No, why don't you try it like this?' "
"So this is me," Hall says, "doing what I say to other people."
Hall decides to pair the sardines with a surefire favorite: ratatouille. It's a perfect summer dish, bringing together all the vegetables and herbs that are ripening now. Hall puts her own twist on it: She says she doesn't like her ratatouille mushy, so she dices the tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and yellow summer squash into tiny, quarter-inch cubes and sautes them separately to keep them crisp. Spiked with fennel and a dash of lemon, the dish has a tantalizing crunch.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: National Public Radio.