Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses.
Cannery Row
John Steinbeck, 1944
I doubt if very many regular blog readers have ever opened a tin of sardines with a key, let alone a can of sardines packed on Monterey’s Cannery Row, and I would challenge anyone who claimed to remember what the sardines canned there tasted like. I was excited when I read about sardines being canned again in California, specifically by the Cannery Row Sardine Company (CRSC), and I became ecstatic when I had my first sighting of the “Sustainably Caught Along the California Coast” Wild Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Wild Planet. Then, a bit of recollection, a bit of tasting, and a bit of research brought me back down to earth…these aren’t your granny’s sardines, and they never will be.
Depending on what you read or whom you listen to, California’s once massive sardine processing industry was spawned - pun intended - during a slack tuna season, or vice versa. Regardless, of why it started, the Pacific Coast from California to British Columbia once teemed with schools of sardines, great tasting Pacific sardines, Sardinops sagax. Times were fat 70 to 100 years ago with canned California sardines competing with the best from Europe, and the canneries selling tons and tons of heads, guts, and what have you to be processed into animal feed and fertilizer. It wasn’t long though before the tail started flipping the sardine with more and more of the ever increasing seasonal catches reduced into feed and fertilizer. Marine ecologists estimate that if a sustainable yearly limit of 250,000 ton had been maintained, the fishery would not have collapsed in the early 1950s. From a record high of 790,000 ton in 1936-37, the yearly catch steadily declined - in the 1952-53 season, the catch was less than 15,000 tons. The last nail in the coffin may have been a change in water temperature and the attendant upwelling in the 1950s. Of course, all of the canning equipment followed the remaining sardines to Peru, today’s epicenter for Sardinops sagax fishing.
As it turns out, I was probably wrong, and quite a few of you may have eaten sardines caught off the California coast. Those sardines are still being canned and probably have been since the processing industry collapsed, but they were just not canned in this country. For years now, most of the West Coast sardine catch has been frozen and shipped off to Asia where it was turned into fertilizer, pet food and oh yes, canned sardines. There are significant fish canning industries in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and if you visit the canned fish isle in any Asian market, most of the sardines, even those in the large, old-style 15-ounce, elliptical cans with reproduction USA labels - selling for $2.99 - are canned in one of those countries. Unfortunately, there are a significant number of different fish that can be sold as ‘sardines,’ so you wouldn’t really know if they were California sardines or something caught locally - in the EU only Sardina pilchardus (aka, Portuguese sardines) can be labeled and sold as canned ‘sardines.’
By the time I tasted the sardines from CRSC and Wild Planet, I was armed with a lot more information, and filled with a lot more trepidation. How did they get the sardines in the round can? Why did they ‘smoke’ the sardines? What was “aqueous natural smoke”? Why didn’t the packaging have so much information about sustainability and nutrition but none about where or how they were processed?
I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the except that they were boneless, skinless and packed in "pure olive oil," whatever that is, and from the feel of the can in my hand, they were densely packed. Well, they were, and my ‘packing’ question was answered. After boning and skinning, the fillets appear to have been put back together and then shingled in the can. They were virtually impossible to get out of the can intact, so if you need something that looks like a sardine, this isn’t the brand for you. However, if you want them for salads, sandwiches or grilled bread, then these are perfect. With my first whiff of the ‘bright’, ‘clean’ aroma, all the rest of my questions were answered.
These sardines were ‘cooked’ in the same way that canners in this country cook tuna, once with the liquid thrown off by the fish remaining in the can. (The Europeans cook the sardines twice, the first time to remove moisture and concentrate the flavor of the fish - the liquid thrown off is discarded - and then a second time after oil or sauce is added and the can sealed.) The CRSC can was packed with so much fish there was very little olive oil and sardine liquid in the can. They had a great texture and light, ‘clean’ flavor even lighter and cleaner than albacore processed in the same fashion. As a matter of fact, the flavor was too ‘light’ for my taste, not enough rich ‘sardine’ flavor. I would recommend them to anyone who didn’t like a strong sardine flavor, or as a first step to someone trying canned sardines for the first time.
I must admit that Wild Planet’s failure to disclose where their sardines are packed and processed, as well as their decision to have then "lightly smoked" predisposed me against them, but my palate is always the final arbiter. The green tint of the extra virgin olive oil did make me happy, but the arrangement of the sardines was somewhat less than appealing. Being used to the sight of silvery sardine skin and with little but their black backs showing in the just-opened can, they looked like baby eels. Given the amount of unappealing brown liquid in the can with the green oil, I believe that they use a one stage cooking process. My first bite after I poured off the liquid yielded a disturbingly strong taste of ‘fake’ smoke and bitterness. With extended exposure to the air, the flesh yielded a pleasant, mild smokiness, and I also discovered that it was the dark part of the skin that was bitter. “Aqueous natural smoke” is ‘liquid’ smoke flavoring developed by food chemists in any number of strengths that is added to the can in lieu of actually smoking the fish as they do in Northern Europe. (The food chemists and fish canning companies have convinced those in charge in this country that the use of ‘aqueous natural smoke’ and actual ‘wood smoking’ produce the exact same effect on the palate, and so they are allowed to use the phrase ‘smoked’ on the label even though the fish isn’t actually smoked, although they must then list ‘aqueous natural smoke’ as an ingredient.) The fish had a pretty good texture given the fact that it had been frozen to make the journey from California to Vietnam. I tried a second can to confirm my initial impressions, and the ‘fake smoke’ and ‘bitterness’ were even more pronounced.
I am not sure that I can recommend either of these ‘brands.’ The Wild Planet sardines have got definite flavor problems, and then there is the lack of transparency. Given all of the recent tainted food issues in China, do we need to worry about the food processing regulations and government inspections in Vietnam, and what about the possibility of local, Asian ‘sardine’ species substitutions that the home office here in the U.S. isn’t informed of??? While I like the spirit behind the Cannery Row Sardine Company effort, I am not thrilled with the results, or the price, and my discomfort stems from the connection between the two. I don’t think that making do with an unsuitable can and a process that does little for the sardine’s visual appeal, or flavor for that matter, doesn’t cut in my book. I would hope that someday CRSC would invest in a little more that just labels. PS: I hear there is some sardine canning equipment coming available!
Amen Preacherman
Posted by: Jonny Hamachi | March 09, 2010 at 02:50 PM