Makes 4 to 6 servings
There are probably as many recipes for pasta and sardines as there are cooks who want to turn out tasty food in a flash. As with so many great pasta dishes, if you do the prep while the water’s coming to a boil, you can pull the sauce together in the time it takes for the pasta to cook to al dente. But I’d make this dish even if it took hours — the mix of sweet and salty, savory and mild, familiar and surprising is too good to pass up.
The recipe is based on what I remember from my first taste of this popular Sicilian dish. The fennel and pine nuts are traditional. I’m not so sure about the raisins and capers, and the tomatoes are outliers, but I toss them in when I have them. You can use whatever sardines you have, but if you get best-quality sardines packed in olive oil, the dish will shine more brightly. I prefer to bone the sardines myself rather than buying them boneless, and I leave the skin on — by the time the sardines mix with everything else, the skin has almost melted into the sauce. (I have friends who also leave in the bones, which are slender, crunchy and calcium-packed.)
Put the raisins in a small bowl and cover with very hot tap water; drain when you’re ready for them.
Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. When it’s boiling, stir in the pasta and cook until barely al dente — you’re going to be cooking it for a few minutes in the sauce, so you want to stop the cooking early.
Meanwhile, set a large skillet, preferably one with high sides, over medium heat, toss in the pine nuts or walnuts and cook, stirring and shaking the pan, until they’re toasted, a minute or two. Transfer the nuts to a bowl and return the skillet to the stove.
Pour 3 tablespoons of the oil into the skillet, add the onion, fennel and garlic, season lightly with salt and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, until softened, about 4 minutes. If the vegetables color a bit, it’s fine. Stir in the tomatoes, if you’re using them, the raisins, capers and the oil from the sardines — or, if you don’t want to use the sardine oil, ¼ cup olive oil. At this point, the pasta should be done; if it’s not, keep the skillet over very low heat until it is.
When the pasta is cooked, scoop out about ½ cup of the cooking water and set it aside. Drain the pasta, shaking off most of the water, and turn it into the skillet (or return it to the pasta pot and scrape in the sauce), stirring to coat it with sauce. Add more olive oil a little at time, if you’d like — you want the pasta to shine. Grate in the zest of the lemon and squeeze its juice over the pasta. Top with the sardines and gently fold everything together. Taste for salt and pepper and drizzle in pasta water or more oil if you think the sauce needs it. Stir in the nuts, reserved fennel fronds and basil, if you’re using it, and serve.
Storing: There are people who enjoy leftover pasta, and I happen to be one of them. If you’ve got some left over, cover and refrigerate it. You can eat it cold from the fridge or reheat it gently and quickly in a microwave, adding more oil, if you’d like.