Drinks advice

Grilled sardines and roasted peppers with Ferreira Branco Seco

On the plate are whole sardines, blackened from the grill, with strips of roasted pepper in oil and vinegar next to them. Opposite that the port sets a dry, chilled glass that keeps the coarse salt in check and clears away the oil of the fatty fish.

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Grilled sardines and roasted peppers
Photo: Yusuke Kawasaki from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Ferreira is a port house from the Douro, founded in 1751. The Branco Seco is the dry white port in the range: seco means dry. White port is made, like all port, in the demarcated Douro region, by stopping the fermentation of the must with grape spirit. In the dry style the fermentation is allowed to run further before the spirit is added, so that less residual sugar remains. This bottle is 19.5 percent alcohol and comes in 75 centilitres. For its white port the house uses white Douro grapes such as Malvasia Fina, Codega, Rabigato and Gouveio, and recommends a serving temperature of 6 to 10 degrees.

Ferreira Branco Seco

The combination

Why this works together

A grilled sardine is fatty and quite salty, and the skin is almost burnt in places. Those are three things a glass has to be able to handle. The alcohol and the cold of this dry white port cut through the fish fat, so that the mouth is clean again between two bites. Because the port is dry, there is hardly any sweetness set against the salt: here it is not sweetness but acidity that does the work, stretching the flavour instead of flattening it. Where a sweet white port would dampen the salt of the sardine, the dry style leaves it be and gives freshness back. And the roasted pepper brings its own, almost smoky sweetness, which picks up the burnt spots on the skin without competing with them.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour and 5 minutes
  • Type starter

What you need

  • 12 whole sardines, cleaned
  • coarse salt
  • 3 green peppers
  • 2 red bell peppers
  • olive oil
  • wine vinegar
  • 2 cloves of garlic, roughly crushed
  • sea salt
  • sturdy bread and boiled potatoes to serve with it

How to make it

  1. Lay the peppers on a hot charcoal grill and let them blacken; under a hot grill or in the oven works too. Then put them in a plastic bag and seal it until they have cooled.
  2. Peel the skin off the peppers and tear them by hand into strips. Mix them with olive oil, a splash of vinegar, the crushed garlic and sea salt.
  3. Sprinkle the sardines generously with coarse salt and leave them for no longer than 30 minutes.
  4. Shake the excess salt off the sardines and lay them on the hot grill.
  5. Grill them for 3 to 4 minutes per side.
  6. Peel the skin off from head to tail; it comes away easily. Place the whole fish on bread or pull it roughly apart, and serve the peppers and potatoes with it with a splash of olive oil.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this dry white port at 6 to 10 degrees; three quarters of an hour in the fridge is enough. Use a tulip-shaped glass and fill it no further than a third. Decanting is not necessary. An opened bottle of white port of the modern, lighter style keeps for eight to ten days according to the institute; for the traditional style fifteen to twenty days. Store the bottle upright in the fridge with the cork in.

All about Ferreira Branco SecoBack to Drinks advice from ’t Bockje

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