Sardines

The now familiar scent of saline fish brine wafts up to my nose when I crack open the second tin of this piscine adventure.

The sardines greeted me, shrouded in their silken silver skin, nestled between thick strands of roasted pepper, with an unsynchronized chant, equally fresh and metallic in smell. The shape of this salty cacophonic aroma, however, left just enough room for the guests of honor to chime in, adding an ever so slight harmonic note of acidity to the overall smell...

We set sail on this pelagic journey of ours with perhaps the most elegant tin in the box: the simple, white and gold gilded Skinless and Boneless Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Cracking open the compact metallic brick and looking down at those white, skinless corpses smiling back at me behind their rich protective layer of golden grease, as any good sardine enthusiast – I’ve discovered – I was expected first to nose the contents I would thereupon be ingesting...