Sardine

Oily fish and wild fennel fronds, with raisins to settle the argument.

The toast is there to catch everything that runs out of the fish.

The tin is oil. The grill is oil. Nobody has improved on it.

Char plus oil plus acid. Remove any one and it collapses.

Oily fish, sweet raisin, resinous nut. Palermo built a pasta on the argument.

Acid and glutamate: the tin’s other liquid, and the better one.

Raw sulfur against grilled oil, sliced thin and salted first.

Sharper than lemon and it survives the char.

Smoked pepper doubles the char the grill already put there.

Sour crumb, oily fish. The bread is half the dish, not a vehicle.

Oily fish, fennel and sugar. Sicily built a pasta on the collision.

Oily fish simmered in soy; the buzz cuts where lemon would only add sour.

Two things kept under oil and salt, arriving on the same fork.

Same grill, same char, same plate. Blister them in the fish oil.

Oily fish and fennel over starch; Palermo has never rated it exotic.

Oily fish, fried crumb, fennel. Palermo has never rated this exotic.

Oily tinned fish through steamed corn, with olives and egg. São Paulo has never apologised.

Simmered together, the acid softens the bones and kills the oily aftertaste.

Simmered with oily fish, the acid dissolves the small bones and cuts the oil at once.

Sweet acid over grilled oil: vinho verde translated into fruit.

Anise pushed past fennel; it makes a tin taste deliberate.

Roast bitterness against fish oil. A rub, not a drink alongside.