A Story About Sardines - It Is Small and Cheap But a Potent Superfood

Sardines look for plankton, and fishing nets look for sardines

Sardines from the Adriatic is the most appreciated in the world among the 15 known subspecies. Interestingly, due to its firmness and quality, it is also used by North Sea fishermen as bait on longlines to catch cod, and Croatian fishers also export it to Spain, where it is tinned.

The abundance and quality of plankton explain its quality and nutritional properties in the Adriatic, and it feeds only on plankton. Schools of sardines spend their lives searching for groups of plankton.

Fishermen are looking for it with their large specialized boats with the help of large nets called plivarice ( drift nets) and powerful lights that hold the found schools together. When you arrive in Zadar, you have come to the centre of the most famous fishing region in Croatia. More than half of the Croatian fishing fleet is located in Zadar County, and most boats specialize in catching small oily fish, sardines and anchovies, and tuna. There are also several plants where, in the morning, after night fishing during the so-called fishing darkness, on moonless nights, freshly caught fish are deeply frozen by the so-called shock at very low temperatures. Thus prepared, it is exported to many European countries.

But you enjoy the taste and the benefits of sardines as a superfood right here, at the source, when your hosts prepare it fresh in a variety of dishes.

Sardines in a hundred ways

Due to its omnipresence, sardines have been feeding the population along the Adriatic for centuries, so they have come up with many ways to easily and quickly turn them into delicious dishes. And none of them is wrong. In Zadar and its region, we usually fry it, grill it ( na gradelama), cook it briefly in a little water with a drop of wine and, of course, good olive oil. We also make their fillets so that the central bone is removed until both sides remain one whole and fry them in breadcrumbs like a steak. We sometimes cook it in a light and quick brodetto with tomatoes or bake it in the oven with a little oil, onion, oregano or some other fragrant herb. When dishes made with fresh sardines, just caught and bought at the city’s fish market, only human imagination is the limit.

But the real challenge for the natives of this area was to store the surplus of sardines caught, the quantities that would remain after the whole place had eaten fresh fish or those that would not have been sold. Before the invention of the freezer, people came up with a number of ways to preserve excess catch. With other kinds of fish, it was most often dried with the help of salt, sun and wind. However, people primarily kept sardines in a massive amount of sea salt. Salted sardines, like anchovies, seasoned with just a little olive oil, are still a highly esteemed delicacy in Zadar and are a regular starter in the menus of Zadar restaurants.

It was only in the 20th century that factories for sardine tinning were established in the Zadar area. And as such it’s excellent! 

Saur from "Pjat" Bistro

However, another dish with sardines arrived from the past on our present-day tables and survived in our gastronomic habits. The name of this dish is saur (or savur) - fried or grilled sardines that are tasted with a specially prepared marinade, which also keeps them edible up to ten days. Saur in Zadar is eaten as a one-course dish served with polenta and is also used as a quick breakfast (marenda), a starter or an afternoon snack. And it is always consumed cold. The speciality of this dish is in the marinade, which adds a new value to the simply prepared fish.

In Bistro "Pjat" in Zadar Varoš, in the city centre, on the Peninsula, a very popular inn of many Zadar residents, and tourists likewise. It is run by the couple Anita, and Leo Mialić, and saur is part of the daily offer, especially when there are no fresh sardines at the nearby fish market. Namely, Leo buys the freshest fish on the market every morning, including sardines, and when he buys a larger amount, Anita prepares saur. She showed us how to prepare it: first, she rolls the sardines in flour, then fries them in oil and puts them in a saur bowl. In another bowl, she sautees chopped onion in olive oil, then she adds garlic chopped into larger pieces, pours a glass or two of white wine, a small amount of wine vinegar (kvasina). She adds some tap water, a bay leaf and a sprig of rosemary, salt and black pepper, and finally sprinkles it all with a few drops of lemon juice. The marinade is cooked for up to half an hour, and while it is still hot, it is poured over the fried sardines. It looks simple, but the secret does not only lie in a good ratio of ingredients but also the quality of wine and vinegar and above all olive oil.