Pasta con le Sarde
Sicily · pasta · serves 4 · 60 min total · medium
Palermo's grand pasta — Arab Sicily's gift, with raisins, pine nuts, and saffron. Wild fennel grows on every hillside in spring.
Ingredients
- 400 g bucatini
- 500 g fresh sardines, cleaned and boned
- 1 bunch wild fennel fronds
- 4 fillets salt-packed anchovies
- 1 medium onion
- 60 g sultanas
- 60 g pine nuts
- 1 pinch saffron
- 4 tbsp toasted breadcrumbs
- 80 ml olive oil
- 1 tbsp salt
Method
- Blanch wild fennel fronds in salted water 5 minutes. Lift out, chop. Keep the water for pasta.
- Soak raisins in warm water 15 minutes.
- Sweat sliced onion in olive oil. Add anchovies, melt them in. Add half the sardines, break them up — they should become a sauce.
- Stir in pine nuts, drained raisins, saffron bloomed in a ladle of fennel water. Cook 5 minutes.
- Add remaining whole sardine fillets, chopped fennel. Cook 5 minutes more.
- Boil bucatini in the fennel water to al dente.
- Toss in the sauce, off heat, with a splash of cooking water.
- Plate, shower with toasted breadcrumbs.