A TIN FULL OF FISH.

An almost instant dinner - pasta with sardines - is in the can.

A tin of sardines is a glorious thing. It’s a snapshot of a school of sleek, gleaming, silvery fish, moving as one.

It’s so good for us, it’s practically a medical prescription.

And it’s an instant dinner when tipped over rice, tossed through pasta, smooshed onto hot buttered toast with a lick of harissa, or just laid out with a Greek or Nicoise salad.

I’m not the first person to want to eat sardines by the shovel load. The ancient Romans and Greeks and practically anyone else living by the shores of the Mediterranean (and, technically, the Atlantic, for Portugal) leaned into sardines and built them into their eating rituals. Venice has bigoli con salsa, for instance, a wonderful pasta sweet with cooked-down onions and salty with sardines.

But sardines travel far and wide, and every coastal and island culture has worked out what to do with their health-giving oily fish, whether herring, mackerel, anchovy or sardine. I like the look of the family-style Filipino ginisang sardinas, with garlic, onion, tomato, soy and calamansi lime – something that needs further investigation.

And I’m loving the current restaurant Snack of a finger of crisp buttery toast topped with a silvery, oily fish of any description.

Even our Australian national treasure, Spike Milligan, had a word to say about tinned sardines.

Of course he did.

A BABY SARDINE, BY SPIKE MILLIGAN.

A baby sardine

Saw her first submarine:

She was scared and watched through a peephole.

“Oh come, come, come,”

Said the sardine’s mum.

“It’s only a tin full of people.”

So here’s a simple pasta that’s jumping with rich mouthfuls of rich, oily fish that somehow never tastes fishy. To me at least – I accept that sardines can come across as fishy to others. I must have a high threshold for fishiness.

The sauce is robustly laced with onion, garlic, chilli, anchovy (because why not?), and olives and oregano, underlining the fact that sardines aren’t wimpy and delicate, but punchy and resilient. They can take a lot.

Hot tip: drizzle the pasta with the oil from the sardine tin; it’s glorious.

LINGUINE WITH SARDINES, TOMATOES AND CHILLI.

Serves 3 to 4

• 300g linguine, spaghetti, or whatever you like, really

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• Half red onion, finely sliced

• 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

• 6 anchovy fillets, drained of oil

• 2 tbsp tomato paste

• 3 tbsp black or mixed olives

• Good pinch of dried chilli flakes, or your choice of chilli format

• 1 tbsp salted capers, rinsed

• Half tsp dried oregano

• 400g canned tomatoes, chopped

• 1 tsp brown sugar

• cracked black pepper

• 2 x 150g cans sardines in oil

• 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Cook the pasta in plenty of simmering, heavily salted water until al dente, tender but firm to the bite - probably 8 to 9 minutes.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the red onion for 2 minutes.

Add the garlic and anchovies, mashing them into the oil, then the tomato paste, tossing to coat.

Cook it gently, moving it around with a wooden spoon until the tomato paste is fragrant and about to stick to the pan (not burnt, however).

Add the olives, chilli, capers and oregano, tossing well.

Add the canned tomatoes, sugar and pepper, stirring, and cook over medium heat for 5 mins, stirring occasionally.

Half fill the empty tomato can with water, and use it to loosen the sauce.

Add the sardines and half the oil from the tin and gently toss through to heat, breaking them up gently but keeping bite-sized, not reduced to tiny flecks.

Taste for chilli, salt and pepper, then scatter with parsley.

Drain the pasta (saving half a cup of pasta water) and place in a big bowl, then immediately add half the pasta sauce, tossing to coat (loosen with a little of the pasta water if you like).

Serve in warm shallow pasta bowls, and spoon the remaining pasta sauce on top, drizzle with a little of the remaining oil from the tin.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES: spring onions, or baby spinach leaves wilted into the sauce at the last minute, or a richer source of chilli, e.g. sambal, gochujang, chilli crisp.

Thanks for dropping by! And thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry for going fishing for a can of sardines.

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I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. Thank you for sharing your culture, traditions, knowledge, spirit, art, music, humour and food traditions, allowing us all to experience a greater sense of belonging in this ancient land.