A watercolour of whole sardines in a pale orange coconut curry sauce beside white rice
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Goan and Keralan fish curries

Sardine and tomato curry

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
2
Water
0.7 L
Active
10 min
Total
28 min

Ingredients

Sardines in tomato sauce are usually eaten straight from the tin on toast. Given ten minutes and some spice they become something considerably better.

  1. Rice on.
  2. Oil, dried onion two minutes. Garlic, curry powder, turmeric and chilli for twenty seconds.
  3. Coconut milk in, brought to a bare simmer. Do not boil it hard or it splits.
  4. Eight minutes to thicken slightly.
  5. Tins of sardines tipped in whole, sauce and all. One gentle turn. Three minutes off a fierce heat, just to warm through.
  6. Lemon juice off the heat.

The tomato sauce in the tin is a seasoning, not a filler, and pouring it away loses a third of the flavour of the dish.

Serves 3.

What this was adapted from

Goan and Keralan fish curries: oily fish simmered briefly in a spiced tomato and coconut base

  • fresh sardines or mackerel → tinned sardines in tomato sauce

    Tinned sardines are already cooked and already in tomato, so they arrive most of the way into the dish. They go in last and are barely stirred, because they will fall apart.

  • fresh curry leaves and tamarind → dried herbs and bottled lemon juice

    Curry leaves have no shelf-stable equivalent and their absence is the biggest single gap between this and the original. Lemon replaces tamarind as the sour element, sharper and less rounded.