Shopping for Sardines

I am, er, "lucky" enough to work in Marin, which for a town near San Francisco with so many rich people, has a deficit of good restaurants. They do, however, have some great gourmet grocery stores. I have been hitting all of them to see how hard it will be to find some of the ingredients in the book.

I thought that I wanted to make the strangest thing in the book, at least to me, the sardines with balsamic vinegar vanilla ice cream. Ewwwww. But I bet they will be surprising. The recipe calls for sardines, which you clean and marinate. I have never seen a sardine and was surprised at how big they are, about the size of a banana. First I went to Whole Foods, where they were all layed out all nice in the fish section. I asked the fishmonger dude if he could scale and bone them. He stared at me, then said, well we can cut their heads off and gut them, but by the time we take all the bones out you wont have any meat. In short, he didn't recommend it. Not wanting to just take his word for it, I went to Woodlands Market in Kentfield, where Sean Penn shops. Its a smallish highend market with an amazing meat and fish counter. They didn't have sardines in stock but could order them if I got at least seven pounds! Argh. I asked if they would bone them and all that, and they said its a big pain and really hard, and by the time they did all that it would cost me $70 bucks. Goddamn! Who the hell eats sardines when they are so much trouble?

In the book Von Bremzen makes boning them sound so dang easy, but I have a feeling I will end up with a huge mess and probably some frustrated tears. So, sorry folks, I am not cooking a sardine recipe! Octopus, on the other hand...
KATY