Spotted:

There’s any number of reasons why restaurant food tastes better than what you cook at home, the biggest one being butter and you don’t want to know how much.  Anchovy paste may rank as a second-tier condiment, but once added to your repertoire, you’ll wonder how you lived without this creamy, completely unattractive fish goop.

Mixed with olive oil, vinegar, and spice, anchovy paste in small amounts doesn’t automatically add a fishy quality. It does however, produce an instant mouth watering effect. Just be careful when you’re adding anchovy paste to sauces and whatnot. These stinky little fish may be packed with good-for-you omega-3s, but they’re also loaded with sodium. So hold off on adding salt when you’re using them. Many salads and dips, condiments and adjuncts use anchovy paste to boost your salivary response. It’s a key ingredient in Worcestershire because anchovies tap into that elusive fifth taste — umami, otherwise known as savory. The applications are endless, but here are eight to you started.

The Caesar salad reigns as the most universal application of anchovy paste. The paste, paired with fellow top-10 savory ingredient parmigiano reggiano, garlic, and the lift of lemon juice is arguably one of the greatest flavor arrangements in modern food. For a basic, pure savory treat, heat olive oil and mix with roasted garlic cloves and anchovy paste for either the best garlic bread spread ever or a little dip the Italians call bagna cauda. The sweet, pungent roasted garlic mixed with anchovy produces an aroma and flavor almost as intoxicating as truffle oil. 

Anchovy paste also forms the glue that holds together the little sung condiment salsa verde — along with minced parsley, garlic, capers, and olive oil. Use it with pork or lamb roast or to blow your next burger out of the water. In continuing the oily fish with meat theme, try mixing 1 part anchovy paste with two to three parts butter and serve a pat over a freshly grilled filet. I also hide a pat of anchovy butter in the middle of my burgers; it adds a flavor not unlike dry aging in seconds flat.

Try anchovy butter for a steak — two or three parts butter to one part paste, depending on your level of comfort with anchovies. The majority of the great steak sauces contain or used to contain anchovy as a key ingredient for achieving that mouth watering savory quality. Replace butter in your mashed potatoes with olive oil and a little anchovy paste to achieve the same richness. Add anchovy when making pasta or pizza sauce for instant depth of flavor to counter the fruitiness of tomato paste. Make Sicilian-style greens by using anchovy paste as a keynote, along with chicken stock, Marsala, golden raisins and lemon for an earthy, piquant, and wee sweet side dish you’ll want to demolish by the bowl.

Maggie Savarino Dutton is an industry veteran who has played bartender, sommelier and line cook and who now consults. She writes "Search & Distill," which appears every Wednesday in the Seattle Weekly, and maintains The Wine Offensive, her blog about wine, food, and anything else that might be discussed over the bar.

"Point of Purchase" photograph by Roadsidepictures via Flickr (Creative Commons), "Pantry" photograph by Áslaug Snorradóttir.