Shrewd sardines left for other climes

Press, 16 July 1983, Page 12

Shrewd sardines left for other climes

Food & Fable

by

David Burton

“Cannery; Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostaligia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heeps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants ana

whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.” — Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.

Gazing along the shelves of the local supermarket, you will see sardines from Scotland, from England, from Canada, perhaps even the luxurious Rodel brand from Bordeaux, where the sardines are left to mature for a year in olive oil before being canned. You will not, however, see any from Monterey in California. For a start, the “sardines” which swim in the Pacific are not true sardines, or pilchards, at all, but a larger fish known to marine science as Sardinops caeruleus; second, the last of the Monterey “sardines” disappeared into cans more than 30 years ago. During its heyday in the late 19305, the port of Monterey was the third largest in the world in terms of fish tonnage.

Each of the 30 canneries

along Cannery Row averaged 2500 workers during the season. In a further 70 plants sardine wastes were reduced into oil and meal.

Their chimneys billowed a stench of fish which was so pervasive it drove away the wealthy tourists from the nearby Ocean View Hotel, and reduced it to a doss house.

The publication of “Cannery Row” in 1945 brought the tourists back again, and for a good reason: many of Steinbeck’s characters and places really did exist.

“Doc,” the kind-hearted eccentric marine biologist of “Western Biological Laboratories” was Ed (“Doc”) Ricketts (1896-1948), a close friend of Steinbeck. His real-life Pacific Biological Laboratories housed a bizarre collection of jars of frogs, squid, octopi, and live rattlesnakes in cages.

His laboratory was a combined office, bedroom, and kitchen.

“Dora Flood”, the upright Madam of the “Bear Flag,” was Flora Woods Adams, and her house, the Lone Star, was the most exclusive on Cannery Row. “Lee Chong” whose “Heavenly Flower Grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply,” in real life was C. M. Sam, and the front window of his Wing Chong Market really was a jumble of clothes, food, and tools.

Despite murmurings from conservationists about overfishing, from 1930 the sardine catch around Monterey rose every year. In 1945 it peaked at nearly a quarter of a million tons, almost double the 1930 figure. Just three years later the crunch came. 1948 was the worst year on record; the

entire year’s catch did not even amount to an average week’s catch during the early 19405. The sardines were simply gone, fished out. They have never been back since. Those that had survived changed their route, swimming now around Cape Horn, some even ending up in South African waters.

One by one the canneries closed down, their machinery dismantled and shipped off to Third World factories. In the' 1950 s and 1960 s a series of fires, some accidental, some not, gutted many of the empty buildings. Today, you can contemethe sagging ruins of ery Row from the comfort of the Outrigger Restaurant, just one of many such restaurants, galleries, and souvenir shops which have been converted from the remaining canneries. The Outrigger is built out over the rocks on the foundations of the old Monterey Canning Co, and the lunchtime I was there all heads suddenly turned to the front window: a matter of feet away, out among the. kelp beds, two rare sea otters had favoured us with an appearance.

Ironically, the menu featured crabmeat, lobsters and just about every other type of seafood, except sarNo doubt the owner con-

sidered them too plebian. Needless to say, however, a whole host of sardine recipes grew up around Monterey during the cannery era. They were curried, made into kedgerees, mixed with Welsh Rarebit, devilled, jellied, put into toasted sandwiches and made into salads with macaroni, celery, green papper, and hard boiled eggs. A simple but delicious dish from Monterey involves splitting the individual sardines down the middle, squeezing lemon juice over them, and topping them with mayonnaise and cucumber.

Fish sauce for spaghetti This was a mainstay of mine during my impoverished student days. I have since discovered it is an adaptation of a Neopolitan dish using sardines instead of a tin of anchovies. You could also substitute a tin of the Russian sauries, which are also very cheap. % cup oil (olive or soya bean) 1 tblsp butter 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 tin sardines 3 eggs Vi cup chopped parsley Juice of ¥2 lemon

Hard boil the eggs and peel. Set the water boiling for the spaghetti, and put the spaghetti on a minute or two after you start cooking the sauce.

For the sauce, heat the oil and butter together in a frypan, add the garlic and cook half a minute or so. Add the sardines (oil and all) and the hard boiled egg yolks, and mash together. Add the egg whites, finely chopped, and the parsley. When the mixture is thoroughly heated through, stir in the lemon juice and serve the sauce on top of the cooked spaghetti. Serves three.