The eyes of anchovies

by Erich Kuersten, Posted May 23rd 2006 @ 6:09PM

My friend the lovely Yukari Rymar took me shopping at the Japanese supermaker last week, and in addition to the okonomayaki which you'll learn all about in my next post, I bravely picked up an assortment of "dried fish snacks" on her assurance they were perfectly safe and that there was no "thing" one was supposed to remove before eating, such as the eye or "inner vein," an anxiety which had prevented me from buying them before.

In case you aren't fortunate enough to have a Japanese grocery near you, these things range from little dried shrimp, replete with their shells and eyestalks, to shredded Squid jerky; also tiny little crabs, where the claws tend to fall apart as you eat them, and... these little tiny anchovies, silver with their big sad, puppy dog eyes staring forlornly out at you through the transparent, attractive packaging.

I brought this last bag into my office and just now my impoverished, half-starved assistant Emily sampled them, the salted dried anchovies, their eyes staring vacantly into the future. She took a tiny bite and wrinkled her dainty little nose in horror. Passing the remnants of the broken creature back to me she declared I had betrayed her trust. I quickly thrust some of my home-made dried cranberry and almond trail mix at her to calm her down, and took a bite of one of these things myself.

It was.... Strange.

The Japanese have a yen for seafood that is much healthier than the comparable North American passion for mammals. We love the steak and the burger; they love the squid and the shrimp. We love the chicken and the pork; they love the tuna and the octopus. These are sweeping generalizations of course, and generalizations are never right, as one great philosopher once said. I suppose it's actually a brave thing to be able to look your snack in the eye right before you eat it, it's part of the hunter-gatherer ethic I myself have preached at slashfood. And yet, this is supposed to be a snack. It's supposed to be fun. If I may use a sweeping generalization, I would say that the Japanese mindset is more honest than ours about acknowledging the cruelties man must inflict on his surroundings in order to survive. We Americans are notoriously two-faced about such things; if I don't watch Supersize Me or read Diet for a New America then I can eat burgers without remorse. It's not like potato chips have eyes, or hamburgers. Yet we consider the mind that could eat a bag of little animals, salted and dried, to be... what? Disturbed? Tough? Strange? Unusual? A little mad, perhaps?

I'm preaching about the bravery of looking your snack food in its poor dead eyes before you eat it, but at the same time, this bag of whatever it is lies safely stashed in my desk drawer. I'm sticking to my trail mix, my odwalla bars, my lemons, my soy burgers, and all the other great, eyeless items life has to offer.

But I know the time will come when these will be the right thing. After all, I love to get anchovies on pizza. And all us brave souls who like anchovies on our pizza, we know how hard it is to get others to come in on the deal. At best we end up only getting half the pizza anchovied up, and then the group who eats the other half complains that the fish taste has spread to the other side like a benevolent, salty flu. Yet for those pizzas, I don't recall the eye being left in. Something about that eye... and what was it Poe said about the eye, if it offendeth thee?

The thing is, cultivating a taste for seafood in the young is a smart idea. And these fish snacks are apparently a huge hit with the kids in , sparking more than one fond fish memory, as in this recollection from Mark Liao.

Imagine what a less obese nation we would be if we'd learned to consider dried anchovies and squid jerky a treat instead of oily potato chips? With their high protein, low saturated fat content, with their fishy oils laden with omega 3 fatty acids, we'd have minds sharp as razors, and the world would be a flowery place without war or people who talk really loudly on their cell phones while standing in line at Starbucks as a result. We'd have the brainpower to solve the most baffling math problems, the attention spans to read entire books or sit through dull lectures on physics. We'd... what was I talking about? Oh yeah, goddamned dried fish snacks. My assistant hates them, did I say that already?

Filed Under: Ingredients
Tags: anchovies, asia, dried fish, dried seafood, DriedFish, DriedSeafood, fish, Japan, Japanese seafood, Japanese snacks, JapaneseSeafood, JapaneseSnacks, seafood snacks, SeafoodSnacks

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-23-2006 @6:55PM plmage said... I love the Korean style anchovies (marun panchan?)
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5-23-2006 @7:56PM SMJ said... If you can't stomache the dried anchovies as a snack, use them in your cooking. I like to put a tiny bit of oil into a pan and toss them around until really dry and crunchy and mix into my fried rice. Or, soak them until they soften a little and cook in an omlette. Throw them into a soup and boil them until the eye falls out. No only does it add flavour to the soup, you can eat the little eyeless bodies or even boil them until they disintergrate.
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5-24-2006 @5:39PM Bruce Dearborn Walker said... I tried them once but I wasn't nearly drunk enough. I'm not sure I could possibly get drunk enough. Yuck. Eww. Ick.
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5-25-2006 @6:25PM Yukari Rymar said... No! They're delicious! They have the salt and crunch of American favorites like tater chips but are actually good for you. Besides, I hear the eyes are where all the free radical fighting nutrients are. Or do you people WANT cancer???
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