I went down to Race Street Fish & Poultry this afternoon and told them I was wondering what to get, and they pointed me to fresh Monterey Bay sardines at $1.99 a pound.
So I bought 4 of them (half a pound roughly) and courtesy of a Pierre Frenay mackerel recipe and some adaptation from memories, had sardines Provencal with an ear of corn on the cob, topped off with some leftover fresh blackberry pie.
They were good, life is good. And of course corn on the cob and blackberry pie aren't Provencal, but who cares?
I had some leftover Dry Creek Vineyard SB that went just fine.
The manager mentioned that they only got 50 pounds of sardines all last year - 40 pounds one day and 10 pounds about a week later. I consider myself lucky.
BTW (actually not BTW, but a real point of posting), does anybody have a recipe (if one is needed) for a quick fry of sardine? I'm thinking of a dish I had in a small town in Portugal, where they were fried or sauteed and still had bits of flour on them, and the frying oil was deliciously garlicky and had a bit of a tingle of chile. I crumbled a Thai chile in my "Provencal" sauce, and that came close, but I was really thinking of something a bit more like a seaside bodega meal. If that makes any sense.
John