Mary Ann with a friend of the family
I don’t have anything against anchovies. Or bait fish in general. I saw a whole tornado of them in an aquarium once, murmurating away in a tank. Or maybe those were sardines, which are just fluffier anchovies.
I don’t want them on my pizza.
But I have learned that I’m okay with stealth anchovies. Evidently I had them once in a Caesar salad and it was a terrific salad. The anchovies did add a certain je ne sais quoi to the dressing, but the je ne sais was a very important part of the quoi experience. So was the fact that it was only noon on a work day and I had a verboten glass of white wine and a little crush on my lunch partner and half my mail route still to deliver. Basically, it was a stellar day.
Anyway. When I eat an animal, I don’t want it to look anything like the animal. I don’t want to see any eyeballs. By the time the anchovy is in the dressing, it should be vapor.
So I bought a tin of anchovies for a new recipe I was trying. Why not? I thought, adultly. I liked it that one time. I can be a grownup about this. It called for only three anchovies and I knew I could count on Dave to eat the rest of them on a bagel, because he ain’t right. I got my ingredients in a row and had a look at the instructions.
Oh, I don’t think so. I’m supposed to sauté a bunch of orzo and lay three fish on top of it? And then top it with my lemon-dill turkey meatballs? Nope.
“I bought a bunch of anchovies for you,” I told Dave. “We’ll get bagels.”
But it bugged me. I mean, there weren’t many ingredients in this and they all seemed important. Lemon. Dill, enough to start a compost pile. Yogurt. Fennel. Mustard greens. It was going to be a flavor onslaught. If I left something out, I could be abetting an insurgency.
I called Mary Ann.
Mind you, everyone I know knows more about cooking than I do. But somehow I thought Mary Ann would be the one to either reassure me or know what to substitute to make the recipe work.
I was right. I presented the conundrum right away. “I was ready to sneak in the anchovies,” I whined. “But I do not want to have my meatballs sitting on top of three stinky fish on a bed of orzo. I’d rather leave them out.” I explained about cooking the orzo and fishies in butter.
“You won’t even see the anchovies,” she said. “They’ll disintegrate. What else is going in this?”
Not much. Turkey, lemon, dill, Greek yogurt, and a blanket of kale. But I don’t have any yogurt, so I’ll have to substitute something.
“If you leave out the yogurt, you’re probably going to want something to balance the acidity. A little vinegar, maybe extra lemon. And in the future, you could buy some anchovy paste and use just a bit and put the rest in the fridge.”
No eyeballs, I thought, warmly. The thing about Mary Ann is she knows how to facilitate a meeting of ingredients so that everything feels included and valued. The merest fennel seed will feel empowered to collaborate. Mary Ann can cook what’s still in your refrigerator after you’ve been gone for three weeks and concoct its antidote from the bread drawer. She knows what tree trunks to drill for umami and which entirely unauthorized weeds to pluck for greens. She can balance your own ancestors’ personal humors with one meal, centuries after anyone paid attention. For Mary Ann, with a soup spoon, Nature is her bitch.
The anchovies disintegrated, just like she said they would. They were but a memory of the ghost of anchovy. No eyeballs. No problem. I’m not going to look at Dave’s bagel.
Happy birthday, M.A.!
Also, happy 115th birthday, Daddy!
Gosh Murr, what a surprise to wake up to! You credit me with more kitchen alchemy than is strictly warranted by the facts, but now I’m all over tingly! Thank you, sweet thang.
Hey Murr:
Ever since reading that the Inuit considered fish eyeballs were a delicacy, I’d wanted to try them. I wasn’t up to eating raw as the Inuit do, but thought cooked would be an okay alternative.
Not so much.
It turns out that whatever trout use as eyeball fluid vitrefies when steamed. I nearly broke a tooth on that thing! Or maybe it was the lens?
I’d also heard good things about fish cheeks. Yeah, really not impressed.
A nice filet, raw, steamed, broiled, fried, smoked. All good.
I like fish cheeks! I even like saying fish cheeks!
There is no recipe on the planet tempting enough, irresistibly alluring enough — even if packed with a winning lotto ticket — that could ever get me to consider, buy, open, or interact with canned anchovies. I hand it to you, ma’am. Respect.
How about fresh line-caught anchovies?
There would need to be devilishly tiny hooks! Nets and such are used to catch anchovies. Years ago I conducted fish surveys for a research lab at Rutgers. We used twenty foot seines to sample the local population. A tiny anchovy turned up when I was identifying our catch back in the lab. It was maybe eaten by a larger fish or washed into a gill slit or some such thing. It was so small it should have just gone through the net. We caught millions of fish and I regretted not being able to eat them. But we were taking them from the Hackensack River, which is one of the eight most polluted rivers on the planet. Who knows what was in the fish!
Nonsense. You just need tiny gear, a small rod, and all day. Pootie has all of that. Have you seen him in his fishing vest and hat?
Micro fishing! Its a thing. Complete with tiny fishing rods and hooks.
Pootie must be an aficionado.
OMG! I love anchovies! They DO break down when cooked, and they provide a nice touch of umami flavor to a dish. Not only do I use it in Caesar salads and pizza, but I have a lamb chop recipe that calls for it (for bonus points, also has orzo!) But if you are squeamish, there is always anchovy paste. I must confess that I draw the line at whole fish. I buy fillets, mostly at Whole Foods, frozen in bags at the site they were caught. Fish stores GET frozen fish, but then they thaw them and put them in their cases to sell. I buy in bulk, so it makes more sense to get something that’s been frozen from the get-go as opposed to stuff that’s been thawed and re-frozen and smelly. (Fish should never SMELL fishy. If it does, it’s not fresh.) A neighbor who fished once gave me some whole fish, and I was SO grossed out while eviscerating them that I started drinking early on and that DID NOT HELP. It was still gross and I had practically nothing left to cook. So I would rather pay more for fillets.
Whereas I loved to gut and clean fish after our fishing jaunts when I was a kid. I would volunteer to clean everyone else’s. These trips always started at oh-dark-thirty. Once in California, while shore fishing (that’s fishing ON the shore, not FOR the shore) my elderly grandmother reeled in a female perch, and as she lifted it up, dozens of baby perch squirted out of her vent (the fishes vent, NOT my gramma’s), and swam away over as the next wave came in over the sand. So I didn’t get to clean those.
Babies squirting out of perch is definitely a thing. Had that happen at least once on the Puget Sound.
On another note, are you THAT sculptor? Bronze caster? If so, you’ve helped me on a museum project where I needed tiny bronze doodads molded and cast for the feet of support posts and on a cabinet restoration project where you molded and cast bronze stars for me. Many thanks!
Yes Bruce, I confess, I am THAT sculptor (because no one else wants to be, I guess). I was looking through my rubber molds last week and there is still one labeled Bruce’s Star.
Well this all warms me to the very heart cockles. Another thing I won’t eat.
There you have it, people, if you were wondering where to get your stars and tiny support post feet doodads cast in bronze, Mary Ann’s your girl.
Another tale of perch fry here — fishing in California, and I don’t recall where, with the kids. Only when I got home did I learn they were live bearing.
I would probably give up eating fish after not only catching it, but seeing THAT, and that would be a shame, because fish are good for you and tasty, too. I really want to incorporate more seafood into our meals rather than beef, pork, and poultry. The thing is, Paul is a meat-eater. Left to my own devices, I could do without. Except for fish.
I’ve heard you can bake a fish with an entire Boursin cheese wheel on top and I’ll bet you anything Paul would eat that. I haven’t tried it.
Ha-ha-ha!
Coward here. I admit it. I bought a small tin of sardines about a month ago for my cats, to see if they would eat them. I haven’t opened them yet. What do I do with them if the cats won’t eat them? I’M not eating them.
I recommend you toast a bagel, butter it, add a large schmear, and lay the sardines on top. Then turn it on its side and slice off the sardine. Oh! Maybe you could go native and plant it under a very small tomato plant!
I am not known for my sophisticated palate. I just know that I do not eat anything with an eyeball staring at me… which always shocked me when I smelled fish for breakfast in Malaysia. Breakfast and lunch are the same meal. Always the eye looking at you. So I basically lived on rice and veggies and fruit. An occasional egg and Indian candy when I could get it. I digress. My student Mohd brought lunch from home each day. Rice and little tiny fish on top which he gobbled down. Nope, no eyeballs, or brains, or tongue or….. Not a gourmet….
Ya know, you can get canned skinless, boneless sardines (lightly smoked) packed in olive oil, my particular favorite. Very mild flavor, no eyes, skin, scales, bones and such. Delicious on a baked potato!
Whose job is it to filet the sardines???
Say what now? What is this fillet word? You dinna fillet a sardine. You just remove the innards and eat the rest.
Smelt, our version of anchovies or sardines, are available locally, though not so much as years past.
I’m a fish fan, prefer it to most meats, and I love the taste of the fish that tastes, well, like fish. Mackerel, Yellowtail, fresh Anchovies and Sardines.
Smelt, seasoned and drenched in flour and fried till crispy are delicious. And I confess I eat the whole damn fish…
I started eating what I discovered was sushi later as a kid on the Rogue River, a guy who took me fishing had been in Japan after WW2, and would take a salmon we’d catch and slice off a tidbit and put it on a saltine cracker. I loved it as a kid.
Well, I’ll eat almost any kind of sushi. Isn’t the plain raw salmon called sashimi? Or is that a ceremonial robe? Or a baby eel? Or the third book of the Ramadama?
That’s the ramadama ding dong, which will transport you back to Eugene, 1962, and you’ll be in a toga with Belushi.
The hell.
Animal House?
I used to buy canned Jack mackerel (which was very cheap at the time) and take a sandwich to eat at work in the lunchroom — mackerel, raw onion and mustard on very coarse whole wheat bread. I loved it, but did not make any friends that year. When I cooked fresh mackerel once, it tasted just like the canned stuff. Maybe I did it wrong.
Nobody stole your sandwich out of the break room fridge, huh.
Never. Oh, I forgot to mention that those sandwiches were also loaded with sauerkraut.
I don’t get it. Where are you guys seeing fish “with eyes”? Any anchovies, sardines, or whatever that I get are filleted, without heads or anything. Is it an East coast/ West coast thing, or what/
Clearly the eyes were in my imagination, but my imagination is not a trifling thing.
Not sure how you feel about escargot, but I thought of you, poop-wise, when I read this https://wanderinweeta.blogspot.com/2023/07/on-breathing-and-pooping-snails.html
Bon apetit! Or not.
Great post, that. Reminds me of the story about the man who heard a knock on his front door. When he opened, he saw nobody there. Then he looked down and saw a snail. He picked it up and threw it across the street. Four years later, he heard a knock on the door and opened it. Nobody there. He looked down and there was the snail, who said “What was THAT for?”
Well I can certainly see why that would make you think of me, dinahmow, and thank you. Jeremy, love it.
What the heck is Orzo? And can I borrow Mary Ann for my next birthday party?
I don’t mind a few anchovies on pizza but I never remember to buy any so usually make it without.
Orzo is a tiny pasta shape that is used in some Greek dishes. ttps://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-orzo/
Mary Ann would come to your birthday party for air fare but she never charges anybody for anything so I’d have to pimp her out personally. I avoid wheat and have been using chickpea rice in place of orzo in those recipes. Chickpea pasta is da bomb.
“Pimp her out?” I dunno… can you pull off a large coat and a big hat with a big feather in it? AND in shades of purple and fuchsia? And if you can, I want to see a picture!
I’d like that! I already wear purple shoes and wore a ostrich feather as bangs during my chemo / bald period. I could show you a picture, but don’t know how to add it here. (If someone knows how to put a picture up, please let me know!)
Also I must say that I am eternally grateful and indebted to Murr, as she was the one who, in 1977 (I believe) forced me to accept the thousand dollar loan in order to move into my current studio (which already had casting equipment in the basement!) AND she financed my emergency appendectomy several years ago. I was able to pay off the initial loan in 4 months by making championship rings for the Portland Maverick baseball team, but she would not accept payment for the surgery. The very definition of a great friend!
I don’t even remember anything about no appendectomy. Pay up.
So you’re going to be like the woman who donated a kidney to her husband (true story), and when they later divorced, she wanted her kidney back? I knew that appendectomy was not even a blip on your radar, because you never lorded it over me. Glad to have that appendix gone, though. Glad to have you as a friend. How lucky am I?
Yes! That was a true story, because it made it onto Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR! (I seem to remember that she didn’t get her kidney back.) And Wait Wait was in Portland this week! I thought of you, Murr, as I do when anyone mentions Portland, ’cause I don’t know anyone else there….
AND they had Paula Poundstone too, my favorite! But M.A., now I’m screwed if I need an appendix transplant!
Mentions of Portland make me think of Murr, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.
Hello Sculptor, having your photo here involves creating a Gravatar, which is sort of a global avatar. I think you have to have some sort of website or blog of your own, first, such as on WordPress, which I do but I don’t do anything with it. I stumbled through this, had a nice smiley photo for quite a while. Then it disappeared for a few months until I stumbled around and got it back again. But now I’m a 211 year old virgin in a maroon gown. Go figure.
Hi Susan! I DO have a website of my own, but unfortunately it was made with Microsoft Front Page and is no longer supported, so I haven’t been able to publish to it for years, and can’t afford a new site yet.
https://www.castofcharacters.com/
Rather large site, with more than 700 pages, and when I could publish, I would modify it frequently. Sigh. Some people were working on a new site for me when the pandemic started and I had to take care of my Mom for a couple of years, so that was never completed, and I disliked a lot of what they did, but entered many hours worth of data myself. They have since gone out of business. Double sigh.
Try this and see if you can create a Gravatar! https://en.gravatar.com/
Y’know, Murr, I Love your posts, but I also LOVE the comments — and the commenters — that follow! I read them all! I feel like I know these people, even if I don’t. I always check out if there is a new comment, because your readers seem very smart and witty, and I love what they have to say. I usually learn something new, or get a reccie for a book to take out of the library, or even a recipe. One just never knows what one will find here! That’s the beauty of it. But one always knows there will be not hatred or shame here… unlike FB (which I do not do) or ND (which I do… but sometimes get expelled for a month for arguing with MAGA people or outdoor cat people.)
“The man who wrote ‘Snowbound’ was Whittier…” —Groucho Marx, IIRC, but I can’t find confirmation online. Anyway, I second your opinion!
What’s ND? Never mind. I don’t need to know! Yes this is a nice little picnic spot here.
Next Door (shudder)!
Oh right. When I changed my email address I quit getting things from NextDoor. I didn’t miss it a bit. My neighbor hangs out on that site all the time and she’s terrified of the neighborhood. And she’s right next door!
I have found it useful for finding recommendations for contractors and for getting notified if a city street I rely on is about to be made impassible. For any other purpose: caveat emptor!
I remember the story about Grandma and the perch birth. I think I slept in that day, though. (I’m Mary Ann’s sister.) I don’t do eyeballs either, and I substitute a lot. When there’s no Whole Foods or other store down your block, you learn to do with whatcha got. Not a fan of anchovies, but sardines are good. Happy Birthday, little Sis.
How kind of you! Thanks, Dronda! You are the best of sisters.
I don’t remember you ever being a fan of fishing, that is until you had a date with a boy in high school, and suddenly you were very excited about fly fishing. Love you!
Oh, in high school, we always try to be all things to all people. I’ve pretended to like a lot of things before I became an adult. I thought I needed to to gain friends and boyfriends. Then I realized HEY! I have a vagina! They want it! I hold all the cards!
How many cards can you fit in there?
I may not have a spare appendix, but if you need a fecal transplant (a real thing), I gottcha covered, so to speak.
Happy belated, Mary Ann!
Thank you Diana! How kind. Actually, you got my birthday exactly.
Nobody uses anchovies in their spaghetti sauce?? Come on. I’ll bet most folks have had anchovy in a pizza sauce and didn’t even know it.
That’s the way to do it.
There is no other blog with comments/commenters like this one. I love you all.
Fish eyeballs! When I was about 10 years old, I won 25 cents from a little boy who didn’t think I’d eat the eyeballs from a pan-fried trout. I did (and they were definitely NOT vitrified) and was proud of my winnings. Then my mother found out and made me give back the money, somehow convinced that I’d cheated the payer — which I HAD NOT.
Nice post,thanks for sharing very useful
Visit Us IT TELKOM SURABAYA