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By Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez
In this Sicilian-inspired pasta dish, sweet fennel and raisins team up with toasty breadcrumbs and pine nuts to bring warmth and dimension to canned sardines. White wine and saffron add a sunny floral quality that brightens the dish even more. Like many sardine recipes, this one proves that you can transform a handful of pantry ingredients into a full dinner-party-worthy meal.
Any sardines packed in oil will work here, but for the richest, most luxurious flavor, opt for sardines packed in olive oil. If you prefer a thicker, chewier pasta, reach for the bucatini, but if spaghetti is what you have, it will also work perfectly well.
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Sardines Packed in Olive Oil
Finely chop fennel bulb. Combine saffron, raisins, and wine in a bowl.
Cook onion, fennel bulb, and seeds in oil with salt to taste in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until fennel is tender, about 15 minutes.
Add wine mixture and half of sardines, breaking sardines up with a fork, and simmer 1 minute.
While sauce is cooking, cook pasta in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water until al dente, then drain in a colander.
Toss hot pasta in a bowl with fennel sauce, remaining sardines, fennel fronds, pine nuts, and salt and pepper to taste. Add bread crumbs and toss again.
Editor’s note: This recipe was first printed in the March 2002 issue of ‘Gourmet.’ Head this way for more of our favorite pasta recipes→
How would you rate Sicilian-Style Pasta With Sardines?
This is an old family recipe from Palermo, Sicily. The best recipe is in Flavors of Sicily by Maria Del Toro. You can buy canned sauce by Cento but it lacks the currents. I soak mine in Gran Marnier which enhances the fennel. I don’t use breadcrumbs. If you can see the Sicily episode with Bobby Chinn he and a chef make it right there at the waterfront. The music is hauntingly mysterious from long ago. It’s an old Arab recipe with wild fennel… so good!
I made this tonight. Used currants instead of raisins, otherwise was faithful to the recipe. It was fabulous. It is now in my book of favorite recipes.
Wow! So good. Very unique and filled with flavor. I did add 5-6 anchovies when sauteing the fennel. More could be added to make an even fishier kick. Based on other suggestions I added some tomato paste to the wine saffron mixture. Also don't know that this is necessary but it all came together as amazing dish. We'll being enjoy regularly going forward.
I made this as written but left out the bread crumbs (personal taste.) It is an easy fast dinner prep and the taste is excellent.
Really enjoyed this for many reasons: delicious, easy, healthy, unique. I was very excited to try it after having a sardine pasta at La Medusa in Seattle - an excellent Sicilian restaurant. Theirs uses tomatoes and olives as well, and while I really liked this version, I think just a bit of acidity would have helped such as from tomatoes, or olives, or as another person suggested, lemon. (Perhaps my wine was just a bit too sweet.) Otherwise, even with using a cheap piece of grocery store sliced bread for bread crumbs, this is a really great recipe!
It's a good recipe, that follows the traditional way I would add just one tip: for the sausage, in Italy we use also almonds (roasted and chopped)and 4 desalted anchovies (you must fry them, butterflied) Before using raisins, while the pasta is cooking, you should soak the raisins in a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes, then drain. The sicilian recipe, if you want to compare with your, is here: http://www.academiabarilla.com/recipes/sicilia/pasta-with-sardines.aspx
I have been craving this dish since we visited Taormina last year where I had this for lunch and dinner more times than I care to reveal. I added some tomato paste and hot water to the saffron as one reviewer suggested. Good call...it helped the fragrant saffron permeate the dish completely. I used whole wheat Panko breadcrumbs. Easy and so good!
This really is amazingly good for such simple ingredients. The only significant change I made was that I just used dry bread crumbs (homemade ones), without tossing them with oil. That's the way my friends in Sicily do it!
this was *so* good. flavors were fantastic, textures perfect. leftovers delicious. adding this one to the rotation.
We make a lot of pasta, and we will be adding this to the rotation (along w/ Carbonara and Puttanesca). We always wanted to try it, but Marcella Hazan's recipe is too fussy for week nights and who has sardines & fennel on hand? The only thing I followed from Marcella was to dissolve the saffron in a TBS of hot water and tomato paste so that it impermeates the dish, and I added 2 TBS of butter at the end to bring the dish together. Also, I used whole wheat Panko as a shortcut for the fresh bread crumbs. Delicious way to eat sardines, which are sustainable, healthy and cheap (Traders has them).
I don't usually review, but this dish had seemed so risky in the beginnning, and turned out absolutely delicious! My husband who does not like sardines nearly as much as I do went back for thirds - he's also sensitive to fruit and savory combinations and has travelled italy extensively. He said Italians would applaud it, he couldn't get over it. I used really nice Spanish sardines packed in olives and olive oil, removed the olives. I also subbed currants for the raisins and italian parsley for the fennels fronds (which I accidently tossed out). It was so delicious, prefectly balanced, not fishy at all, refreshing and light - perfect for summer. Totally cravable and now will be part of my usual pastas. I also used Bucatini instead of the perciatelli. I used the best quality ingredients I could find and it was worth it. Very easy to make and clean up. I've made other sardine pasta dishes and I think this is far superior because the wine and fennel add light, fresh complexity. I think garlic would weigh it down. I put red pepper on the table and served a pinot grigio - perfecto!
I've been making this all spring, anytime I find fennel at the farmer's market. It's become one of my favorite, if not very favorite, pasta recipe. And I eat a lot of pasta.
Make this only if you like sardines. I happen to like sardines quite a bit. My husband is not such a big fan, but he really loved this pasta. Go figure. It's not so good re-heated. So this recipe was way too much for the two of us. We really liked the sweet and rich flavor that the pine nuts and raisins imparted.
My wife and I thought this sounded delicious. We've been looking for ways to eat more sardines because they're a relatively sustainable seafood. Unfortunately, this recipe was truly revolting. We each took a few valiant bites, but then moved on to bowls of cereal and yogurt. Consume at your own risk.
This dish has a really unique flavor, somewhat sweet. I made it exactly as written, but next time I might use scallops instead of the sardines. Also a note - don't put the entire 1/2 cup of olive oil your pan when cooking the fennel and onion - you will never get good carmelization. Rather, put 2 tablespoons in pan and remainder in after you add the wine mixture
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