Name: Bucatini: Sardines and Fennel (Pasta cu li Sardi)
Yield: Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 20 g pine nuts; 1 medium onion, diced; 1 small fennel head (with as many leaves as possible, or a small bunch of wild fennel if you can get it); 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil; 1 pinch saffron strands, in 1 tablespoon boiling water; 2 g fennel pollen (or fennel seed, crushed); 20 g raisins; 200 g bucatini; 300 g fresh sardines (or 150 g fresh sardine fillets); 25 g bread, crustless, torn up; 1 whole salted anchovy, or 2 fillets

Preparation info

Serves
4
as a starter

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

The Geometry of Pasta

By Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy

Published 2010

About

This dish seems to summarise Sicily on a plate, with earthy tones of pine nuts, fennel and saffron representing the wild and beautiful hills, combined with sardines, just one of the oily fish so loved on the island.

Ingredients

200 g bucatini
300 g fresh sardines (or 150 g

Method

First clean and fillet the sardines and anchovy.

For the sardines, rub them under running water with your thumb to scale them. Then grasp a fish in your left hand (assuming you’re right-handed), with the dorsal fin against your palm, belly facing out. With your right hand, pinch the nape of the neck to break the flesh above the spine. Now gently pull the head forwards towards the belly

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