🐟 Pasta con le sarde

Pasta con le sarde is a Sicilian pasta dish: pasta with fresh sardines, wild fennel, onion, salted anchovies, raisins, pine nuts and saffron. The Accademia Italiana della Cucina lists it among the recipes of Sicily as 'in the Palermo style' and prefers bucatini.

For four people the Accademia gives 400 g of pasta, 500 g of fresh sardines, a bunch of wild fennel, an onion, three salted anchovies, 20 g each of raisins (uva passolina) and pine nuts, a sachet of saffron, breadcrumbs, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. The fennel is boiled in salted water for 15 minutes from the boil, squeezed, cut into pieces of 1–2 cm, and its cooking water is kept. The onion is browned in oil, the cleaned and boned anchovies are melted into it, then the boned sardines, raisins and pine nuts go in for 10 minutes; the fennel and the saffron, dissolved in two ladles of the fennel water, follow for another 10 minutes. The pasta is boiled in the same fennel water until al dente, tossed with the sauce, put into a greased dish, sprinkled with toasted breadcrumbs and baked for 10 minutes at 220 °C.

The Accademia notes several variants: without breadcrumbs; without the oven, served right after dressing; or with the sauce layered in the dish before baking.

VisitSicily gives a recipe for 500 g of bucatini: 500 g of fresh sardines, 500 g of wild fennel, 50 g each of raisins and pine nuts, four salted sardines, an onion and extra virgin olive oil. The fennel boils for about 20 minutes and the bucatini are cooked in its water. The page does not list saffron, breadcrumbs or cheese, and says the dish has many local variants, with or without tomato sauce, or baked. The Accademia recipe contains no cheese either; its toasted breadcrumbs go on top before baking.