Tin thing
In 1999 New York chef, Gabrielle Hamilton, opened her new restaurant Prune serving tinned sardines as a starter – this was no cleverly plated oceanic homage, Hamilton just opened the tin and sent the sardines out with some crackers.
In formal New York dining circles eyebrows were raised – tins were not a done thing.
Over in the bars of Madrid and Lisbon where Hamilton had seen it however, serving conservas, as tinned fish is known, was a completely regular thing.
The hubbub over Prune’s sardines eventually subsided and, the Iberian Peninsula aside, tins of fish resumed their place as emergency or camping go-to’s in the back of people’s pantries.
Cue two decades, a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis later and something curious happened – out of nowhere Spanish and Portuguese tinned fish started trending like crazy as a delicious thing to eat on a stay-at-home date.
Coincidently, on an isolated island off the coast of Tasmania, while doing a three-month stint as conservation volunteers, Dan and Rachel Weeks were surviving on, among other things, a lot of tinned Ortiz anchovies from Northern Spain.
But as they ate their bowls of spaghetti alla puttanesca they wondered, why, with our abundance of quality seafood, couldn’t Australia produce delicious tinned fish like this?
Their curiousity led to California’s Fishwife Tinned Seafood Co and the discovery that small scale local tinned fish was a thing, a thing that they might be able to do.
This led to a lot of research, the hiring of a food technologist and a chef and the purchase of a small canning machine.
And so began The Little Tin Co.
Dan and Rachel’s guiding mantra became Local – sourced and canned in Australia, Delicious – tasty and amazing recipes and Considered – seafood from an abundant species that was sustainably caught.
Together over many months the team developed their first three products; Port Lincoln sardines in EVOO, spicy smoked mussels with Cape Jaffa Whiskey and smoked kingfish pâté with Vermouth (three more varieties are on the way).
Launching in June they are operating on a cottage-sized scale with small batches packed and boxed up by hand as their fish and mussels come off the boat.
Dan and Rachel were inspired by the iconic Spanish and Portuguese fish tin art and have teamed up with artist, Ingrid Mangan, to create a beautful box design for each recipe.
So if you’re stuck for ideas this Christmas why not give the gift of tinned fish.
Fair Food are proud to be one of a handful of Victorian shops stocking Little Tin Co’s cans. You can find the whole range here (heads up – a new batch of sardines arrives in a week when the boat comes in).
Have a great week
Chris
