I’m kinda like this. I think anchovies are a great flavoring element, but they are too strong for me by themselves (and I also don’t enjoy the pin-bone texture eating them whole either). If I were to put them on a pizza or a salad, I would cut them into small pieces. A little of their flavor goes a long way.
But mostly, I just cook with them. They are also marvelous pureed into homemade vinaigrette-based salad dressings.
Nah, you leave them whole for a burst of salt, fishy goodness!
About the bones: Why is it that when you eat them straight out of the tin, the bones are for all intents and purposes non-existent; but when you cook them on a pizza, they’re suddenly all pointy?
Wienerschnitzel isn’t Wienerschnitzel without an anchovy on top.
A more specific version of what I came to post. You can make anchovy butter (with bonus garlic, capers, lemon zest or chili to taste) and toss any vegetable in it. Greens and any kind of beans seem to work best.
No salt of course.
I’ve seen pizza places put anchovies on top raw, or on the side, and that’s just uck. I mean, I like anchovies, but yeah, cooked and chopped up and mixed in with the cheese is the way to do it. Or maybe mixed in with the sauce, hrm…I’m not much of a red sauce fan, but if I sauteed anchovies first and worked it in, I bet it would add a good flavor.
Fishy eggs for breakfast. I sautéed some onions and anchovies in butter, then added diced tomato, and one egg, scrambled. With toast and ‘butter’. I only used three fillets with the egg, so now I’m snacking on them au natural.
Love, love, love! At any given time you can find the following in my kitchen: tins of anchovies, anchovy-stuffed olives and anchovy paste (all of which always go in a Bloody Mary or just eaten as is.) Many pizza places don’t offer them as an option, because they claim it’s so hard to remove the taste/smell from the utensils and pans. Whatevs.
I remember when anchovies were a free topping. Where I am now, my pizza choices are Little Seizures. Or there’s a mini-Domino’s off the freeway or the rather expensive Pizza Pipeline a few miles away. Little Seizures charges for anchovies. I’ve been to other places that just don’t carry them because nobody orders them. (Possibly because they don’t carry them.)
There’s an Italian restaurant in Bellingham that I recall has excellent pizza, but it’s been almost ten years since I’ve been there. I’ll have to see if Roomie wants to go there some night when our schedules coincide.
BLECH!! If I wante to eat salted cat food, I would buy cat food and salt.
I tried anchovy pizza once. It’s the one thing I ever tried on a pizza that I wasn’t able to eat a whole slice. There may well be some contexts in which a little anchovy (emphasis on little) might help a dish, but as a pizza topping isn’t one of them.
If anchovies are disintegrated and mixed in to the dish they add a nice flavor. I don’t want to eat them whole/fileted, though.
When I worked on the East coast of Malaysia, I first saw them laid out in the sun on large sheets of canvas. By the thousands (or millions?). We ate these piscatorial delights mixed with peanuts as a crunchy/salty/fishy/peanutty snack to accompany ‘jars’ of Anchor or Carlsberg.
I’m still addicted to them - thank goodness they’re readily available in asian markets here on the Upper Left Coast.
Not all anchovies are heavily salted. Fresh marinated anchovies are common in Spanish tapas. In this form they are neither very fishy nor salty - they’re more like small sardines (but much better, in my opinion). I also once had fried whole fresh anchovies, which were delicious and, again, not salty nor particularly fishy.
I agree with Philliam about dried anchovies with peanuts. These are available at my local 99 Ranch. Very tasty.
Nothing else to do with them. Not like there are any robots around that need oiling.
I wish I could get fresh anchovies.
Just make sure there are no Decapodians around when you make your Anchovy pizza, anchovies are like catnip (or crack) to Decapodians…
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Are anchovies really a common pizza topping anywhere?Yes, in Italy, and by extension in restaurants that serve Italian pizza. But even American-style pizza comes with anchovies, at least in Europe. The German and UK Pizza Hut franchises have it as a standard topping. (By that I mean it’s available to add as a topping, not that it comes by default on every pizza!)
I love canned green olives stuffed with anchovies. I could eat those all day, forever.
They’re also good in pasta sauces and on their own - though very salty, I can only have one at a time.
Anchovies with lots of cilantro, mmmm.
That’s the second stage of the vicous circle of anchovy decline in the U.S. The first stage is that ignorant pizza store employees think that anchovies should be spread on at the same density as, say, pepperoni. This makes a horrible over-salty, overly-fishy mess of a pizza. Which means nobody who tries it likes anchovies. So nobody teaches employees how to use anchovies properly on a pizza…
The best sandwhich in the world is a thin italian loaf cut longways, with fresh tomato slices, an anchovy on top of that, and mozzarella on top of that, melted under a broiler so the cheese is melty with brown spots, the tomato is warm and the anchovy half-dissolves into them.
I’m not reading this thread because it would make me sick, I just voted Hate them! I really hate them! But I bet they’d make great bait for bottom feeders if I was going to go fishing.