There's nothing fishy about eating canned pilchards

Now that the economy is on the fritz, what’s for supper is beginning to sound murderous. Sometimes there’s nothing for supper apart from ingenuity, which has a badass taste.

But, to ameliorate the situation, there is a growing craze for canned fish — mackerel, sardines, tuna and my favourite — pilchards. High in Omega 3 fatty acids, they’re smoochy, nutritious, and cheap.

Goodness knows we’ve lived really rough when it comes to food, genuflected before factory chicken, ponied up hundreds of rand, learnt pretentious words and eaten food so chemically enhanced it would be better used to clean the kitchen floor.

The other night at a swanky dinner party, the starter was moreish patties sprinkled with foraged Cape Sorrel flowers. They were tangy and tasty with a super sizzle. An international chef who was a VIP guest took notes for his New York eatery.

The patties were made with a Cinderella ingredient, so often overlooked — Lucky Star pilchards, R50 for a large can, ample for a family of four. I usually buy the small cans for R17. I’m mad for the tin. If Andy Warhol had known about Lucky Star it would surely have overtaken Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

To climb on the cheap and chic culinary caravan you need three ingredients — ginger, garlic and green chilli. Invest in a Crockpot or instant pot, it saves gas. I use an old pressure cooker (remember them?) which my partner says is the most dangerous implement in the house, easily able to blow up the whole place.

If you have a drop of Italian blood, you’ll have a bottle of homemade Puttanesca sauce in the fridge. Made with black olives, capers, anchovies, onions, garlic and herbs, it’s a spicy essential and made fresh it keeps in the fridge for up to five days.

You can do a hundred things with pilchards, one of the reasons many soldiers carry them in their backpacks. A foreign correspondent friend was kidnapped in Khartoum by some Islamists and discovered she had a tin of Lucky Star in her bag. “It kept me going for nearly a week,” she told me. 

When I’m working at home, I make myself an easy dish with slices of white bread and whatever herbs I have growing in the courtyard, often only mint, abundant after the rain. 

I usually buy the pilchards with tomato sauce (they don’t do them in olive oil), pour them into a bowl, smash up the flesh, removing any gruesome bones and chuck in anything you have to hand. I then plunge my hands into the mixture like Nonna Pia on TikTok, until it turns into a thick paste which, when I am in a hurry, I just spread on bread.

I have also made fish cakes. Take a blob of the mixture and fashion it into a small, round ball, again using hands, and press into a patty shape. Put some oil into a pan and fry slowly, watching all the time. Once I got caught up on my phone and burnt a whole batch. Use a spatula and turn and toss. The pilchards are already cooked so you’re just browning. It takes about four minutes. You can remove them while they’re still soft and they’ll harden afterwards.

For anyone brought up on the Cape Flats, a smoortjie will flash your taste buds. For those who don’t know, it’s like a sambal, made with sautéed onions and tomato sauce mixed with anything you have around, usually chicken liver, Viennas, “penny polonies” and tinned fish. I made a smoortjie this morning with some leftover stew, sweet potatoes and rice. It’s a versatile dish that fills many gaps, the easy and ultimate budget buster. If you want to get creative, add it to any family favourites. I was reminded of this old favourite while paging through the cookbook Cape, Curry and Koeksisters by local food writer Fatima Sydow and her sister Gadija Sydow Noordien. While the book is filled with loads of easy-to-make homemade recipes, it was the smoortjie that got me salivating. If you grew up on the Cape Flats, the smoortjie will provide a nostalgic kick. It’s the perfect lunch or brunch. When I’m working at home, it’s a tasty snackaroo.

I learnt about cheap and nutritious meals when I was l was living with a Jamaican community in Porto Bello Road, London, with my Jamaican mate Bladrick who spoke a lingo which was, at least for the first six months, unintelligible to me. He’d buy stuff off strollers. “Sell me wan bokkle a iyl.” Sell me a bottle of oil. He loved what he called chatlit (chocolate) cake. Tuesday was Chewsday. We’d sit on the fire escape steps, watching street dancers juking (another of Bladrick’s favourite words) and grinding to heavy rhythms. In between cooking he’d dance, thrusting his hips and pelvis out, keeping his legs straight. 

Here is our classic pilchard stew recipe which we ate with a “bammy” a sort of flat roll.

You need:

1 large tin of Lucky Star pilchards in tomato sauce.

1 medium onion, chopped or sliced.

1 medium tomato or tube of tomato paste.

Any frozen vegetables and/or herbs you have around.

A piece of grated ginger and a clove of garlic, smashed up.

Fry the onion in oil. Add ginger and garlic. Cook for a few seconds. Add tomato last and cook until soft. Open the tin and separate fish from tomato sauce using a fork. Remove any big bones. Add tomato sauce from tin to the pan, add salt to taste and leave to simmer until tomato sauce has thickened. Add the fish fillet and allow to simmer for five minutes. Lastly, add frozen vegetables. I usually add peas, the most amenable of frozen veg. At this time of year you can use sorrel greens to spice it up. If you’re up to primping, that ubiquitous little yellow flowered Cape Sorrel with its clover-like leaves you find on road edges and in fields has a wonderfully tart taste, a little lemony. Crunch a bunch of it over the dish before serving.

I texted Charles, a famous Cape Town forager, to ask about Cape Sorrel. He replied. “Ah yes, a great idea, they’re out at this time of year. They have heart shaped leaves and yellow flowers commonly known as suurings.” Sorrel is filled with calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, sodium, Vitamin A and C, a wonder plant. Most recipes combine the tart taste of Sorrel with ingredients such as chives, cream, butter and chervil — a type of herb related to parsley.

Found in spring and summer — now in South Africa. The taste is reminiscent of the herb Sorrel (Rumex acetosa), making them refreshing to chew and a perfect accompaniment to most dishes.

For a small, oily fish belonging to the herring family, the pilchard punches way above its weight.