Welcome to the start of a new week! Apologies for the lack of posts last week, I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately and just didn’t have it in me to share any blog posts, I was also so caught up in not feeling well that I totally missed our one year anniversary of moving to the UK! I really can’t believe that one year has already passed… it doesn’t seem real! I will admit though that it has probably taken about this much time for me to get adjusted to actually living here, to be very honest I’m not 100% sure that I can see Joe and I living here long term but for the time being it’s the place for us to be. 

I know I’ve promised on here and on my Facebook page that I would do a post about where we live but I just haven’t got around to going and taking photos of everything I want to, but it’s on my to do list so hopefully one of these days I can share that post with you!

Anyway recently I’ve been on a bit of a sardine kick. I absolutely love the taste of fresh sardines, actually I much prefer them to the canned version. Not only are they delicious and inexpensive, but sardines are packed with all sorts of goodness!

Why eat sardines?

As I mention above, sardines are not only delicious (I think so anyway) and inexpensive but they provide you with a myriad of benefits including:

• Having loads of Omega-3 fatty acids.
• Containing calcium, iron and potassium.
• Being full of Vitamin D and Vitamin B12, which are important for bone health and cardiovascular health respectively.

Over the past few weekends I’ve been having fresh sardines for lunch. They’re super quick to make and go well with so many things, one of which is this Persian Salad Shirazi with Sardines that I’m going to be sharing here. The salad is called ‘Salad Shirazi’ and comes from the city of Shiraz in Iran. It’s sort of like the equivalent of a Pico de Gallo from Mexico.

The Persian Salad Shirazi doesn’t take long to make, it just has to sit in the fridge for about an hour or so, so that all the flavours meld together.

If you’ve never tried fresh sardines before, I highly recommend you do! Try this delicious Persian Salad with Sardines recipe and you’ll LOVE eating sardines!

Persian Salad Shirazi with Fresh Sardines

Ingredients:

• 3 fresh sardines, cleaned and butterflied (ask your fishmonger to clean and butterfly them for you if you don’t want to do it yourself at home).
• ~200g/7oz cucumber, peeled and diced.
• 1 red capsicum/bell pepper, diced (for authentic Salad Shirazi use 2-4 tomatoes, I just don’t like tomatoes so I substitute red capsicum).
• 1/2 – 1 red onion, diced.
• 1 Tbsp dried mint.
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice.
• 1 Tbsp ghee or coconut oil (I make my own ghee at home using Kerrygold butter, but I like this one (U.S) and this one (UK), for the coconut oil I like this one (U.S) and this one (UK).
• Sea salt, to taste. (UK, U.S)
• Freshly cracked black pepper, to taste.

Method:

Place diced capsicum (or tomatoes), cucumber and onion into a mixing bowl.

Add in the dried mint and season with salt and pepper.

Mix well, then cover and place in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes.

Remove from the fridge and stir in the fresh lime juice to mix.

Place back in the fridge and refrigerate for about an hour before serving.

For the sardines, place a cast iron grill pan on medium-high heat.

Add in the ghee.

Season both sides of the sardines with salt and pepper.

Once the pan is well heated, place the sardines skin side down into the pan.

Cook for about 2 minutes on the skin side, then flip over and cook for another minute or two on the other side. (Oh and don’t worry about any leftover bones in your sardines, they’re easy to eat since they’re soft and are of course very nutritious!)

To serve, place some of the Persian salad on a plate, then top with the sardines. Enjoy!

*PAID ENDORSEMENT DISCLOSURE: In order for me to support this blog and its activities I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. All of the products I recommend are ones that I either own/have used myself or that I believe to be valuable. If your purchase a product via an affiliate link on this blog your cost will stay the same but Cinnamon Eats will receive a small commission, which will be used for the maintenance of this site. Thank you for your support!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin