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Pasta con le sarde is the signature dish of Palermo, the capital of Sicily, a dish of Arab-influenced Sicilian baroque cooking that layers the island's most contrasting flavours into a single, unforgettable pasta. Fresh sardines are combined with wild fennel, anchovies, plump raisins, pine nuts, and saffron - a combination inherited from the island's Arab conquerors of the 9th century - and tossed with bucatini for a pasta that is simultaneously sweet, savoury, salty, and perfumed with the sea. The breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil and scattered over the top - called muddica in Sicilian dialect - serve as the poor man's Parmesan, adding crunch and a nutty counterpoint to the soft, saucy pasta. This is one of the most complex and historically resonant pasta sauces in Italian cooking.
Prep
20 min
Cook
30 min
Total
50 min
Servings
4 srv
Difficulty
Medium
Calories
445 kcal
For 4 serving(s)
Per serving
Clean the fresh sardines: remove the heads, tails, and backbones to get flat fillets. Set aside.
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to the boil. Blanch the fresh fennel fronds for 3 minutes, scoop out and chop roughly. Soak the saffron in a splash of the fennel water.
In a large frying pan, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Cook the diced onion until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the anchovy fillets and mash them into the oil until dissolved.
Add the chopped fennel, raisins, and pine nuts. Stir in the saffron-infused water and cook for 5 minutes.
Add half the sardine fillets to the pan and cook gently, breaking them up, for 3-4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
Cook the bucatini in the boiling water until al dente. Meanwhile, in a separate small pan, toast the breadcrumbs in olive oil with the garlic until golden. Set aside.
Drain the pasta and add it to the sardine sauce with a splash of pasta water. Toss well. Top each plate with the remaining raw sardine fillets (which will cook slightly from the heat of the pasta) and the toasted breadcrumbs.
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