Nonna's Pasta - Sicilian Sardine Soup Recipe

This is the Sicilian Sardine Pasta from Hostaria del Vicolo, a Michelin - listed restaurant who are staying true to their roots - they call this dish:

IL PIATTO DELLA NONNA LILLA - Grandma’s sardines soup

It was a few years back, and I discovered a restaurant in a back street of the coastal town of Sciacca in Sicily. A young lady was cooking and the restaurant was more elaborate than you would expect for the area. Actually, the food was a little too modern for my liking. I ordered zuppa della nonna, grandmother’s soup, and what arrived was a bowl of sardine and cut pasta, a kind of tomato-based thick minestrone. It was breathtaking. The sense of place, along with the heritage of this recipe, has stayed with me. I had to meet the young chef who had made it. It turned out that Lila Bentivegna knew of me, and she has now spent some days each closed season working with us at Trinity. Lila and I have swapped many recipes. I mentor her and love the way she has evolved as a cook. This one is a gift from her to me and from me to you.

And it's still on the menu today. Grazie Chef Lila Bentivegna for sharing this gift with me.

Sardine Soup
300g fresh sardines, filleted, tails and dorsal fins removed (no need to remove the pinbones).
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 bulb fennel, finely diced
1 pinch cumin seeds
1 pinch saffron
4 large fresh tomatoes, deseeded and diced
200g tinned chickpeas, liquid only
500g tomato passata
500g water
50g dried spaghetti, broken into pieces of about 1cm – (around 1 handful of pasta)
1 lemon, juice only
50g plain flour, for dusting.
Salt, black pepper, olive oil
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First choose your saucepan well: a heavy-based one with high sides is ideal and it does not need to be oven proof.
Place the pan on a medium heat and pour in a very generous glug of nice olive oil.
Lay the sardine fillets flat (they can be ‘butterflied’ if you like) onto a plate, skin-side up. Season them with salt and pepper. Dust with the flour.

Now lay the fillets into the hot pan, skin-side down and let them fry. Treat them with care, as if you intended to eat them fried. Once the sardines are crisp and caramelised on one side, turn them and immediately remove the pan from the heat.

Add some olive oil to the pan and toast the cumin seeds for 1 minute. Add the onion and season. Then add the fennel and carrot and add more olive oil and cook over a high heat to allow to vegetables to sweat quickly. Add the tomatoes, raisins, saffron, aquafaba, passata and water and bring to a boil. Add the sardines and broken spaghetti and cook over a low heat for around 30 minutes stirring well to aid breaking down the sardine fillets. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Serve with a decent glug of olive oil and warm ciabatta bread and that’s it! A little bowl of Sicily.