From Sicily a great recipe for the summer.

Yesterday I finally cooked the "Pasta con le Sarde" I was telling you last week! This is a typical Sicilian dish that puts together, in a fantastic way, some of the best ingredients from the south!

Because here in London it's not so easy to find the wild fennel, I just went for the normal one, but the taste was great anyway.

 
So for this recipe (3-4 people) you will need:

- 500gr Bucatini Pastificio dei Campi, as the traditional recipe recommends, but also with some Penne a Candela it was great!

- 500gr of fennels

- 50gr of pine nuts

- 50gr of raisins (soaked in water for half hour)

- 500 gr of fresh and sustainable sardines

- saffron

- 3 anchovies

- olive oil, salt, pepper, 2 onions

 
As written on the"Grande enciclopedia Illustrata della gastronomia":

Cut the fennel in sticks and boil them in a big pot with water and salt for like 20 minutes while in a pan with some olive oil you will cook quickly the sardines (after removing the heads, the backbones and entrails). Take them off and cook there the onions, until goldish. Add then the drained fennels (remember to keep the water in a side to cook the pasta), the sardines, pine nuts, the raisins, some salt and peppers. Cook on a low fire to mix everything well.

Then cut the anchovies in little pieces and place them in another pan. Let them melt with some hot oil and add them to the big pan. After the saffron. Melted with the some fennel’s water and while waiting for all this to cook, boil the pasta the water you used before for the fennels.

When is “al dente” drain it and toss it with the sauce, but let it rest few seconds before to serve it. It will take all the flavors of these great ingredients and it will be fabulous.

I’m sure you will enjoy like I did!

PS. Lots of people seems to love this recipe so i think i will participate with this to the next Presto Pasta Night hosted by Slaphappykitchen. Let's see what they think!