The Case for Anchovies

Almost everyone who says they do not like anchovies has been eating them wrong. The anchovy you do not like is the one draped wet across a Caesar salad, briny and aggressive and making its presence known. That anchovy is not the point. The point is the anchovy melted into butter with a little garlic, spread on bread that has been toasted in a pan. The point is the anchovy dissolved into a braise, giving it a depth that you cannot name but would miss. The point is the anchovy on a slice of potato, under a quail egg, at a bar in Madrid at noon. Used correctly, the anchovy does not announce itself. It simply makes everything taste more like itself. This is the highest ambition of any ingredient, and the anchovy achieves it more reliably than almost anything else in the kitchen.