Pasta con le Sarde
Sicily's extraordinary pasta with fresh sardines, wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts and saffron. Cooking the pasta in the reserved fennel water, rather than fresh salted water, infuses the noodles themselves with a subtle anise flavour before they even meet the sauce.
Ingredients
Instructions
Boil fennel fronds in salted water 5 minutes, remove and reserve water for pasta.
Chop blanched fennel, steep saffron in 3 tbsp warm water.
Sauté onion in olive oil, add anchovies and melt them in.
Add sardines and cook gently 3 minutes, breaking them up slightly.
Add saffron water, raisins, pine nuts and chopped fennel.
Cook pasta in fennel water, drain and toss with sardine sauce.
Scatter with toasted breadcrumbs — the poor man's parmesan.
Nutrition (estimated)
Per serving, based on a standard 4-serving portion and standard nutrition references — not a lab or USDA-verified measurement. Some ingredients in this recipe couldn't be matched to a reference value, so treat this as a rough estimate.