Raincoast Trading Sardines - Dill & Parsley
From Coast to Coast
Originally Published: Thursday, July 6, 2023
Specs
You know what day it is in Vancouver after two days of rain…? Monday.The Little Fish That Could
Having lived my entire life near the Pacific Ocean I find that I am a special kind of sucker for anything that uses the largest body of water on Earth as part of its advertising hook. The Pacific on the subtropic Asian coast varies greatly from its temperate North American mirror, yet there is something undeniably similar about them.
Our purveyor Raincoast Trading from Nanaimo, BC has brought in today’s feature all the way from Malaysia on the other side of the Pacific; Wild Pacific Sardines in Dill & Parsley. Not too much info is available about the product’s origins, but the website indicates that their seafood is procured sustainably from all over the world. The company features a series of products caught and processed on our Canadian coast, as well as imported products processed overseas.
If you are interested in reading more about Canadian Pacific coastal canning, I have a brief article about the status of BC canneries that you can find here.
While sardines have fallen in popularity over the last few decades as GDPs and standards of living grew, they are no doubt still one of the most important canned commodities in the world. There is a small resurgence in the popularity of sardines with more and more people venturing into the world of sea-cuterie. Sardines are one of the most accessible and affordable ways to dip your toes in the ocean that is canned seafood.
Sardines are mostly gathered from the Atlantic (with the world’s largest exporter being Morocco), but the Pacific also contributes a large chunk of the total amount. Malaysia is one of the smaller producers of export seafood, which makes this product doubly interesting as you’d be hard-pressed to find many cans on your local store shelf with a Malaysian connection.
Norwegian crispbread: full of seeds and crispy goodness.The Silver Bullet
A fragrant, tangy punch was liberated from the can with the popping of the easy-open lid. The lid peeled off easily in one clean motion and I was confronted by the gloss of the orange-red tomato sauce, swimming with bits of green herbs, no doubt the origin of the zesty perfume from before. Soaking in the sauce were three sizeable pieces of sardine bullets (a preparation method where the heads, fins, tails, and guts are removed, and the rest of the fish left intact).
One of the major upsides of preserving the fish in bullet form was the added structural integrity. Extracting a piece from the can with a fork and a couple of blind jabs was easy and stress-free as I never felt like the fish were in danger of falling apart. A downside of this preparation method was perhaps the fact that there would be fewer pieces to go around. If you were a fish-hog however, this would not be much of an issue.
After transferring one of the pieces of fish onto my crispbread I split it down the middle for a closer look. The spine was still attached, and the two halves separated without too much manhandling, a decent amount of sauce came with the morsel onto the bread and soaked into the pores. The tangy tomato sauce masked any strong fishy odours from the sardine and left just a faint smell of the sea.
I took a bite. My first impression was largely positive, but there was something missing I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The texture was solid, dense, and maybe a bit dry, but not unpleasant; the flesh flaked easily but was not sandy or gritty; it had enough resistance for a satisfying chew, but never felt tough.
The bone-in experience was also pleasant, adding just a bit of extra flair to the tasting experience and paired well with the sauce. The sauce was smooth and tangy, with the umami and acidity from the tomatoes on full display. It was not too sweet nor too salty and balanced the natural ocean flavours quite well. The metallic flavours that usually accompany sardines were less intense that some of the other products I’ve had, largely due to the tang from the sauce.
Due to the nature of the sauce, some of the pleasant natural flavours from the sardines were lost since they couldn’t punch through. The nuttiness, bitterness, and metal found in more neutrally preserved cans were absent here. This could be an advantage to some, but it was a slight disappointment for me.
Then it hit me, at the very tail end of the experience, was a tiny hint of dill. The thing that was missing were the green herbs that it promised on the package. Though the specks of chopped up herbs were clearly floating in the sauce, the canning process had destroyed their most fragrant characters. This was what I was missing.
Not pictured: Dill and parsley flavour bomb.What’s the Big Dill?
Dill is an iconic herb found in seafood cuisine for its powers to subdue overly fishy flavours. It also happens to be closely related to fennel and anise, some of my favourite herbal flavours. It’s an herb that is very distinct in flavour, and dare I say, not subtle. To have a product that advertises dill as a main flavouring agent, yet be so understated with it, is a bit of a disappointment and amounts to fraudulent advertising
No, not really, but it’s still disappointing since I do like a sprig of dill and some parsley with my seafood, and this can was purchased specifically for its inclusion of these flavours.
While the product wasn’t as “purist” as some may prefer, it was still a very delightful experience. The textures and flavours were all enjoyable with very few negatives to speak of.
The dill is not very present, and neither is the parsley, but that doesn’t mean the sauce is not tasty. The fish bullets are generously coated in the red umami paste, which enhances the textures as well as the flavours. I recommend scooping up the rest of the sauce with some crackers or bread.
Scoop up that sauce!In terms of value, this is the high end of what I would expect to pay for sardines with some very rare exceptions so it loses a mark there, but the quality and flavours are good and it’s still a relatively affordable product so the penalty is not harsh. This is still a good value product in the sea of options.
This is a great choice as the main protein in a sandwich or as an option for a unique sea-cuterie. It also doesn’t break the bank, though it’s on the upper end for Sardines. Overall, it’s a tasty product and that’s really what matters. I look forward to trying their other offerings in the future.