Cooking Smells
Over the past few months, I started walking to and from work a couple of times a week. My office is about two and a half miles from my house, long enough for good exercise, short enough to be reasonable. I try to vary my route so I can explore sections of Beverly where I might not otherwise go. It’s fascinating on many levels, and I walk through some areas that are densely populated and others that are almost rural. One night as I walked back around 6 PM, I smelled the distinct sweet and savory aroma of tomato sauce cooking. It made me hungry! But then it suddenly hit me – it was the first and only time I noticed cooking smells on any of my evening walks. Was I just unobservant or are people no longer cooking? Since then, I’ve paid special attention and I’ve varied my return times in case I was missing common dinner hours. The result? Outside of the downtown restaurants, cooking smells are virtually non-existent. I smelled outdoor grilling one night and hot dogs on a frying pan on another, but considering I walk past hundreds of houses, people must not cook often. Don’t say the windows must be closed, I can hear dozens of TVs every walk!

When I was young, I remember walking down my parent’s street and smelling all the different dinners on the stove. Our Italian neighbor’s house had scents of tomato sauce, sausages and garlic wafting in the air, but other houses had smells of macaroni and cheese, pan fried steaks and other common foods of the time. But, apparently no more. It’s fashionable to build houses with bigger and bigger kitchens and people spend megabucks on granite countertops and the fanciest equipment. Yet the extent of their cooking is heating pre-prepared foods in the microwave. The biggest irony is that kitchens have grown larger because people like to be around the warmth, smells and action of cooking!

On Lidia’s Kitchen (Lidia Bastianich’s cooking show on PBS), her son (and restaurateur) Joseph Bastianich remarked that when he was growing up, it was the poorer houses that smelled of cooking. To which Lidia pointed out, “Ah, but which houses did all your friends want to hang out in?”

Here’s a recipe that always smells great to me. If you make it, I guarantee it will perfume your neighborhood.

Grilled Sardines

• a dozen fresh sardines


• olive oil


• a couple of lemons


• Salt and pepper


• A few sprigs of chopped parsley

Rinse and clean the sardines. Slit the bellies and remove the entrails. You can leave on the heads and grill them whole, or remove the heads and butterfly the fillets (to get the result shown in the picture). Put the cleaned sardines in a dish, sprinkle with the olive oil, some fresh squeezed lemon juice and salt and pepper. Allow them to marinate while you start your grill. I prefer grilling over hardwood charcoal, but regular briquettes or a gas grill will work too.

When the fire is ready, throw on the sardines. I have a fish grilling basket (on sale at store that carry grills) that simplifies cooking fish. The fish is cooked in the basket, and when you are ready to flip, you just turn the basket over! Otherwise, just cook the carefully on the grill. The sardines cook quickly, no more than a couple of minutes per side if your fire is hot. The skin side will have some blistering and charring. But let the aroma be your guide!

Serve with lemon wedges and sprinkle with a little more olive oil and the chopped parsley. They are especially great with a crisp white wine such as a Sancerre, Pinot Grigio or Spanish Albariño.