It’s common knowledge that sardines are packed with good nutrients, however, I couldn’t see how I could get my kids to have sardine here in the UK. Then one day we thought of making our own pizza…
Mind you, I love the idea of making my own from scratch but only ever managed that once. Here’s a cheat recipe for busy families:
The recipe
- Get a plain Margarita pizza, a pizza base, or even garlic bread in the shape of a pizza
- Add extra cheese, fresh tomato, rocket, yellow peppers, or whatever you, and especially the children fancy.
- Open a tin of sardine. Break into pieces and scatter on the pizza (the bones are soft and edible)
- Put in the oven as per the pizza’s package instructions (usually around 10 minutes)
- When ready, let it cool down (you don’t want to burn those little creatures with molten cheese)
And that’s it!
A small tip: if there are any fussy eaters (for example, my eldest at the moment doesn’t ‘like tomato’, you can split the pizza and put more of said food on one of the side than the other (or none at all – I still slip some anyway, just in case it gets through).
Nutrition
Sardine tin
Sardine is loaded with protein and omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, iron and potassium.
I was worried about the children’s salt intake but when we tasted it, it actually did not taste that salty. Apparently canned sardines are not that salty compared with other canned foods.
The kids loved it! I honestly was not expecting it. I thought it would be one of those things they would go… bleargh, disgusting! But actually, they did love it and asked for seconds, and even thirds.
Of course pizza is not the healthiest of foods but as pizzas go, fish and vegetable toppings made at home have to beat other varieties. In any case, we only have food like this occasionally.
Why is this pizza good?
- Quick – all ready done, unless you decide to chop lots of vegetables (and even that you can buy chopped, fresh or frozen, if you like)
- Economic – all the basic ingredients are very cheap
- Healthy – because of the sardines and all the other vegetables you can throw in.
And you know the best thing? Sardine is such a Portuguese thing!
It gave us an opportunity to bring it up in conversation and for them to taste a fish they never tasted before. Of course, I would much prefer BBQed sardine, but fresh sardine is hard to find in the UK and even harder to cook in a house in winter… it really needs to be done in the sunshine, in an outside BBQ. So this is the next best thing, really. It was still a great opportunity to mention our Portuguese food heritage.
I know other countries enjoy eating sardine as well. Do you know which ones? Lets build the definite list of sardine loving countries… and if you try this recipe (if you can call it a recipe), please leave a comment. I’d love to know how you found it.
