Pasta con Le Sarde

Name: Pasta con Le Sarde (Pasta with Fresh Sardines)
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Cuisine: Italy
Ingredients: 30 ml/2 tbsp sultanas/golden raisins; 25 g/1 oz/⅓ cup pine nuts; 90 ml/6 tbsp olive oil; 1 large onion, chopped; sea salt and ground black pepper; 400 g/14 oz fresh or dried bucatini, thick perciatelli or other pasta shapes; 275 g/10 oz fresh or thawed frozen sardines, cleaned, boned and with heads removed; 2 whole salted anchovies, boned and washed; 150 g/5 oz wild fennel (leaves and stalks), washed and trimmed; 1 sachet saffron powder; 2 litres/3 ½ pints/8 cups cold water; 10 ml/2 tsp fine salt

Pasta with Fresh Sardines

Preparation info

Serves
4 to 6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

The Italian Regional Cookbook

By Valentina Harris

Published 2017

About

The ingredient that gives this dish its unique aniseed flavour is wild fennel. It is not only used in the sauce, but also flavours the pasta, which is boiled in the water in which the fennel was cooked. Saffron and fresh sardines complete the palette of flavours, unique to this most Sicilian of pasta dishes.