Pasta con le Sarde

Pasta con le sarde is a dish you absolutely have to try: no gastronomic trip to Sicily is compete without it. As always, there are numerous variants depending on the area: with or without tomato sauce, or baked in the oven. Whichever it is, this mixture of flavours, the saltiness of the sardines with the sweetness of the raisins, will let you taste a genuine flavour of Sicily.

Preparation: slice the fennel only throwing away the hard parts of the stems. Cook it in salted water for about twenty minutes. Drain it with a perforated spoon because you’ll need the same water for cooking the pasta. After draining it, chop it finely. Cut an onion into strips, soak it in water, and then fry it in plenty of oil. Add the fennel. Clean the sardines and cook them with the fennel. Add the pine nuts and raisins, previously soaked in water. Fry the sardines in a frying pan and salt them. Cook the bucatini in the fennel water until ‘al dente’ and drain them. Stir them into the mixture and then add the salted sardines.