Salad of Pasta, Fennel, and Sardines

This free-form adaptation of the traditional Pasta con le Sarde makes use of the fennel tops so often discarded by cooks (and, worse, by produce marketers). When you next prepare a dish that calls for fennel bulbs, save the flavorful tops to replace the wild fennel (unless you can get it in your area) that is the basis for this unusual mixture. The thick pasta dressed with pine nuts, dried currants, saffron, tomatoes, puréed fennel, and sardines is a Sicilian dish that clearly shows the inf