Offering the fresh and savory flavors bucatini of southern Italy, pasta with sardines is a traditional dish in Sicily. Bucatini, a long, hollow pasta, perfectly captures the simple sauce recipe, perfectly balanced with sardines, wild fennel and other herbs. Make this sunny recipe to transport your kitchen to the islands of Sicily! How to prepare Con le Sarde pasta (Sicilian pasta with sardines). Why does it work?
- Soaking raisins and saffron in heated wine hydrates and adds volume to the raisins.
- Chopped fennel bulbs, fennel leaves and fennel seeds add layers of fennel flavor (a good substitute for the intense wild fennel used in Italy).
- Seasoned breadcrumbs are a great substitute for shredded cheese.
Fusion food comes in many forms. A common example is when the chef pulls some from the cooking column A and some from the cooking column B, then mixes them together. The chef hopes this new creation will be the next Cronut, but usually what you end up with is Yang’s next Egg Stew (don’t you dare steal this, this one is totally mine). Another type of integration takes place in a more organic way, as foods, techniques and ingredients are mixed over time. This mixing could be the result of two cultures being very close to each other, or due to the spread of food along extensive trade routes, or due to violence and conquest. Often, all these forces are present at the same time. 
On paper, it seems like a no-brainer, something I didn’t even realize until I started writing this. I found myself eating, so I never thought about what it would be like for someone who has never inhaled a plate and then taken a bite. It’s super delicious for me. There are many different types of col sard pasta, but they all consist of an unlikely combination of sweet and savory flavors: sweet fried onions, aromatic fennel and saffron, plump raisins, roasted pine nuts, salted anchovies and chunks of fresh sardine oil. In addition to pasta, of course (usually bucatini, but spaghetti is also a great option). 
The problem with them in this dish is that they are already well cooked in the can, which makes the meat dry and dense. Put it in a pan and cook it like a sauce and you will only make the problem worse. Otherwise, they will fall apart, depriving you of the soft and tender pieces of sardines, the best versions of this dish. For anchovies, you want high-quality fillets packed in oil. If you’d like, you can follow my instructions for oil-packing your own salted anchovies, a worthwhile project if you eat a lot of them (they do very well this way, much better than most anchovy products, you can eat a lot of them ). 
