Tortang sardinas

Tinned sardines drained hard and broken coarse, set in egg with tomato and onion.

Fish, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 2 tins sardines in tomato sauce, 425 g total
• 4 eggs
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 tomatoes, deseeded and diced
• 3 spring onions, sliced
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons oil

Method

1. DRAIN THEM HARD AND BREAK THEM COARSE. Tip the tins into a sieve and press with the back of a spoon for a full minute, then break the fish into large flakes with a fork -- not to a paste. The sauce in the tin is mostly water and sugar: left in, the egg will not set and you get scrambled fish soup.
2. Lift the spines out as you break them up. They are soft enough to eat but they give the finished torta a gritty centre.
3. Deseed the tomatoes and squeeze the dice in your hand. Same reason: this is a dish with three wet ingredients in it and only four eggs to hold them.
4. Beat the eggs with the pepper until uniform.
5. Fold the sardines, onion, tomato and spring onion into the egg. Fold, do not beat -- you want flakes visible in the finished slice.
6. Heat the oil in a 24 cm frying pan until it just shimmers, and pour the whole lot in at once.
7. Low heat, 6 to 7 minutes, undisturbed, until the edge is set and the top is still glossy. Run a spatula round the rim to free it.
8. Slide it onto a plate, invert the pan over it and turn the two together. 3 minutes on the second side. Flipping it in the air breaks it, because there is not enough egg here to hold a torta that size.
9. Cut in wedges. Good hot, and better cold the next day with rice.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes