Pasta con le Sarde
at our favorite restaurant in Praiano, Amalfi Coast....before

.....and after.

And here is my version.  I was so excited to make this!  The recipe is below.

In a previous blog, I discussed my cookie “history”. Well, believe it or not, I have a sardine history as well. As a small child, I grew up in the Canary Islands, back in the day before we worried about where our children were every second of the day. When I was about seven years old, I used to be invited to lunch quite often by a family of Spanish strangers. I was drawn to their doorstep by the great food smells emanating from within. I guess when I kept showing up around lunch time, they thought they should take me in. I remember being served sardines in tomato sauce on bread….and loving it. My mother would be mortified to know I dined with strangers like a stray cat, and to this day I haven’t told her.  Shh….

When we lived in Rome, we were lucky enough to experience many lovely weekend trips to the Amalfi Coast. In the tiny hillside, seaside town of Praiano we would often order Pasta con le Sarde or Pasta with Sardines, (along with the seabass baked in salt crust featured in a previous blog). It was always so incredibly rich, aromatic and flavorful making it necessary to perform la scarpetta at meal’s end. I have tried to replicate that recipe here to pretty good success. 

Here’s your list of ingredients:
Fresh sardines
Olive oil
Onion, chopped
One garlic clove, smashed
One anchovy fillet (jarred)
14-15 oz. can of Italian plum tomatoes in puree
Italian seasoning
Italian flat leaf parsley

Put a big pot of pasta water on to boil, and let’s get started:

A note on how many sardines to buy:  Sardines are very small fish to begin with, and after you clean and debone them, there’s simply not that much left. In this recipe, they’re all going to break down into the sauce anyway. I bought 10 for two generous portions. 

Our first order of business will be prepping the sardines. In Italy, the fishmonger will clean them, but he will leave the de-boning to you. Here, my fish guy wouldn’t do the cleaning, so….

First, chop off the head. Leave the tail on for the moment as it gives you something to hold on to. With your knife perpendicular to the fish skin, scrape gently in the opposite direction of the way the scales lay, to remove scales. This only takes a moment. I have spared you a photo of gutting the fish, but it’s a very simple process. Make a slice along the belly and wash out the entrails, leaving a nice clean fish body to work with. Dig your fingers under the spine at the tail end of the fish, and lift and pull the whole skeleton away from the body. Now the fish opens very easily, like a spineless book and you can trim off the tail and fins.  It is not necessary to remove the skin of the sardine.  Now that you have all your little fishes prepped, we can start on the sauce.

Heat some olive oil in a sauté pan.  Toss in some chopped onion and your smashed garlic clove.  Rub the garlic clove around in the hot oil to spread its flavor and discard it when it browns.  As the onions begin to soften and brown, toss in an anchovy fillet.  Anchovy fillets are very helpful to flavoring sauces.  They simply melt away into the sauce leaving behind a nice salty hit and adding a depth of flavor.

Pour in your can of tomatoes, giving each one a squeeze to release its juices and hasten the breaking down of the tomatoes into the sauce.

Now lay your sardines “open-book”, meat-side down on the sauce.  Use a large spoon to bring some sauce to the top to cover the sardines.  Let them simmer.  While the sardines are cooking, you can go ahead and start cooking your pasta, being sure to salt the pasta water generously before adding the spaghetti.

The sardines will cook very quickly and before long, it will be easy to start breaking them up with your cooking spoon.  Add a good pinch of Italian seasoning, and taste to see whether you should be adding some salt and pepper.  Just before serving, throw in some chopped Italian flat leaf parsley.  Remember to never throw out all your pasta water when you drain your spaghetti.  If your sauce has become too thick, adding a little starchy pasta water is the perfect way to thin it out a little. 

Add the drained spaghetti to the sardine sauce, toss and serve……..with a nice red wine, of course!  Buon appetito!

Would you like to eat Pasta con le Sarde in Praiano? That can be arranged. Drop me a line at [email protected].

Let me take a moment to discuss the evolution of my cookie history. Yes, we all have a cookie history. You know… how you’ve evolved from what you liked as a child to what you like now. Maybe some of you (Do you have your hand in a bag of frosting covered circus animals right now?) have yet to evolve. Personally, I was always a half-baked cookie eater. Be nice now. I’m referring to the state of my cookie dough, not my state of mind. I always took my cookies out of the oven a minute too soon, relishing the ooey-gooeyness of the not-quite-done, eat-it-while-it’s-still-too-hot, cookie. Oreos: never. I was simply not fond of anything dry and crunchy. Then I moved to Italy.

Upon arrival, it became clear to me that my cookie habits were going to have to change. Simple ingredients such as brown sugar and chocolate chips were not always easy to find at the grocery stores. Maybe I would be doing less cookie baking, and more cookie buying. This was not going to be a huge problem as there is an abundance of bakeries in Italy; way more than I see in the U.S.  Fresh baked bread, cookies and treats can be found around every corner in every neighborhood of Rome. Even in very tiny countryside villages, there is simply Always a bakery. It is after all, a necessity of life…..don’t you love the way Italians think?

But upon exploring these bakeries, I came to discover that most of the cookies were not of the ooey-gooey variety. To my dismay, they were mostly of the hard and crunchy type. Oh no. I was forced to eat something outside of my cookie comfort zone, and you know what? There are some pretty darn good hard and crispy cookies out there. Go figure. One of my favorites are Ciambelline al Vino. These crunchy gems are made with red wine (yes!), can be dipped in red wine (yes, again!) and have a lovely sparkly sugar topping.

When I left Italy, some of my goodbye tears were shed for Ciambelline al Vino cookies.  So every time I went back to visit, my good buddy Holly made sure I returned home stocked with them from the bakery in her town of Sermoneta, where they make particularly good ones.  But now, my friend Giovanna, (Remember her?  She shared her zucchini lasagna recipe with us in a previous blog.) has given me her recipe and permission to share it with you here.  Yay!  We are all in luck as a result.

Here’s your list of ingredients:
500 grams of flour (about 4 cups)
1 cup of canola oil (Giovanna uses sunflower oil, but it’s harder to find here.)
100 grams of sugar (about ½ cup) (+ a little extra in a small bowl. For my extra sugar, I used a coarse sugar)
1 cup of red wine, dry; not sweet wine (+ a little extra in a small bowl)
1 T. of anise seeds (Sometimes Giovanna adds finely chopped hazelnuts.  I did not.)

Let’s get started:
Preheat the oven to 400.
Line two cookie sheets with either parchment paper, or Silpat liners.

Okay folks, it doesn't get much simpler than this.  Just put the list of ingredients into a large bowl.  Giovanna doesn't even use a bowl!  She makes her cookies "pasta-style" by mounding up her flour on a work surface, making a well, adding the rest of the ingredients, and mixing it up right on the counter.

Now comes the fun part! Using your hands, mix the ingredients to form a dough.  (Could it be any easier?) You’ll find the dough feels a little oily, but be sure to mix until all the ingredients are well blended without overworking the dough.

Sprinkle some flour on your work surface. Pull off a hunk of dough, and with your hands flat roll the dough into a “rope”. (Think Playdough and your childhood.) The rope should be as thick as your finger. Pinch a section off and form a circle....just pinch the ends together to hold. It’s kind of like making little wreaths. My circles were about as big around as a finished chocolate chip cookie would be.  

Now very quickly, dip the top surface in red wine, and then press down into the extra sugar.  Lay the ciambelline out on your lined cookie sheet, sugar side up.  I fit a dozen on a sheet. 

Bake for 20-30 minutes.  I baked mine for about 25 minutes.  I know it sounds like a long time, but remember these are hard cookies; like biscotti almost.  You should be able to tap the surface and feel that they are hard.  Here they are after I've taken them out of the oven. The undersides should be golden.  You can see in the one I've broken open how they are vaguely pink inside from the addition of the red wine. I baked one sheet at a time, using the baking time to prepare the next sheet.  When done, remove to a cooling rack.  When the cookies have cooled completely, store in an airtight container.  They keep for quite a while….until your husband finds out you were baking while he was at work. Buon appetito!

Thanks Giovanna, for another great recipe!  Would you like to cook in Giovanna’s kitchen?  Drop me a line and let’s see if we can work something out.  She's waiting for us to come visit! Email me at:
[email protected]

And Holly….this does NOT mean you no longer need to bring me cookies from Sermoneta!