I had never in my life eaten fresh anchovies until arriving in Sicily this year. Our local fishmonger, Enzo has them almost every day, along with fresh sardines most days as well. I still haven't figured out if the sardines are just large anchovies, but I digress. Thanks to the fabulous 'interweb' i found a number of excellent recipes for these lovely ocean wise critters, but what I've not seen is the method to fillet them. This last time I asked Christopher to do a photo-documentary of the process, which is actually very simple. Like most things, Im sure there is more than one way to do it, but this is the way that our fried Shelia taught me and it seems to work very nicely. Who would have thought that filleting a tiny little fish could be so easy? No knife required even.
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| Pinch the head |
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| Run your thumbnail along the spine to extract the guts |
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| Keep going along the spine |
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| Pinch behind the head until you feel your fingers meet and the top of the spine pulls free of the flesh. Pull out the guts attached to the head and the spine. |
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| Sometimes it is easier to take out the guts, then pull out the spine as in this case. |
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| Here's your anchovy fillet, just rinse away some of the blood. You can also remove the swim fin which, once removed results in the fillet becoming two individual sides. The bones are really tiny, so it is a matter of taste. |
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