Sardines...

Maybe it's because of the time I worked in Italy or the labor of love that is required to butcher and clean these fish but I absolutely love sardines!!!  I think the best way to eat them is just a simple cure or pickle; this time we decided to cure them with salt, sugar, fennel pollen.  They were served with fresh cannelloni beans that were smoked with hickory and rosemary, reserved some of the smoked beans and made an encapsulated sphere of smoked bean cream; crispy bread tuiles, shaved VA crab apples, and a crab apple juice "sponge".  The beans and shaved crab apples were dressed in tarragon oil.  The juice "sponge" was treated with versawhip(a soy based substitute for egg whites created for meringue use) and xantham gum.