Pasta con le Sarde Siciliana

Palermo, Sicily

Palermo's quintessential pasta: bucatini or spaghetti dressed with fresh sardines, wild fennel fronds, saffron, pine nuts, sultanas, and onion — the Moorish sweet-savoury combination that defines Arab-influenced Sicilian cooking. The sardines are de-boned and some (a third) are dissolved into the sauce; the remainder are pan-fried whole and draped over the pasta at service. Wild fennel (not the bulb — only the fronds and flowers) is the irreplaceable aromatic. The dish is at its best in spring when both wild fennel and fresh sardines are at peak season simultaneously.

• Both are Mediterranean pasta/noodle dishes where seafood is cooked into the sauce and the starch absorbs the seafood flavour — Catalan uses squid-ink and squid, Palermitan uses sardines and saffron, both reflecting the Arab culinary influence on Mediterranean pasta → Fideos amb Sèpia Spanish · (Catalonia)
• Both use small, intensely flavoured oily fish dissolved into a pasta sauce — Venetian uses salted anchovies with onion and no spice, Sicilian uses fresh sardines with saffron, pine nuts, and sultanas, both representing the tradition of fish as pasta seasoning rather than garnish → Bigoli in Salsa (Anchovy Pasta) Venetian

Sweet, savoury, anise-perfumed, with the rich sardine depth and the sun-dried fruit sweetness of Moorish heritage — Sicily's most culturally complex pasta