Very small, lightly toasted sardines in olive oil by Galician cannery Real Conservera Española. The highly renowned, 100-year-old cannery has produced only 3,000 of these beautiful, labour-intensive tins.
Serving tip: perfect from the tin with a glass of mouth-watering Albariño. Or try these creamy-textured sardinillas on small squares of toast or crackers with salted butter and fresh tomato and thinly sliced onion.
About the sardines: Real Conservera says: "Our 18/22 small sardines are truly a gift from nature. They cannot be specifically purchased on the market, which is precisely why they are such a limited edition.
"These sardines are not caught separately. They appear naturally among our regular sardine catches, and during production we carefully select them by hand and can them separately as something truly special. Their size is exceptionally rare and impossible to source intentionally.
"To give you an idea of just how uncommon they are, from one tonne of sardines in the standard 14/18 size range, we may obtain less than 5 kg of sardines in the 18/22 size. That means they represent only a tiny fraction of the catch, making them both extremely limited and highly sought after.
"This rarity, combined with the delicate texture and elegant presentation of such small fish, is what makes this edition so unique."
More about Galician sardines:
Sardines from the Galician estuaries are famed for their flavour and quality. Real Conservera Española hand prepares and packs the best, sustainably-caught fish using traditional methods. Some of these methods - lightly toasting the fish prior to canning for instance - have fallen out of use in some canneries because they are time consuming and reduce output. Real Conservera Española remains committed to quality, and this tin was recently placed towards the very top of the World's 101 Best tinned fish.
More about the cannery: Read the blog.
