Pasta Con Sarde

Today I arrive and am exhausted. Rain in Newark saw me off and cold damp greeted me in London. Paralyzing heat crushed me at Punta Raisi, Palermo. Communication as tired as I am is an exercise in humility; an imprecise consequence of spotting an unsuspecting, friendly enough looking person who survives my inarticulate mumblings. After shifting my luggage, checking the dictionary, stringing a few infinitives together, I am ready to speak. Usually the message gets across. That's fine, but more challenging if I need to understand anything said. Because I don't. Not a single word . Sounds, here and there, sure, but this language being spoken around me is not Italian. It is Sicilian , and I am transported back to my childhood listening to my grandfather and his brothers argue and play pinochle. They speak in their mother and father's Sicilian dialect. I fast rewind back to these Sundays on a cloud of tobacco. I, however am in slow motion.

My plan is to spend two weeks in Mongerbino a seaside town 20 minutes from Palermo, where I will review and hopefully rouse my dormant University Italian; and prepare for two months of volunteering on organic farms throughout Sicily and Calabria. My father has graced me with a kind of love and support that even he would agree he kept from me the first 40 years of my life, and I am free to travel, put my finished marriage behind me and leave the kitchen hoping to trace my spiritual and social nourishment back to it's source: the farms and sea of the Meridionale. Sicily and Calabria.

Classes begin Monday so I am free for two days. I arrive at the train station in Bagheria and my ride from the School rattles off a slew of instructions, and drops me off at what appears to be a small nursery school in a residential area of this city of 40,000.

I guess that this is my home for the day, for the night, really I am not sure. At least for the night in any case. I am pretty confident that I have communicated that I will need one of the school's bicycles as mentioned on the web, and believe both Thomas, the School's owner and bicycle will arrive tomorrow at 10.

Bathe, charge laptop and find dinner. I can barely think about dinner, but I am very hungry and sure I can find the strength to lift my fork .

I hate to admit it, but I have a lousy sense of direction, so I am only able to adventure as far from the school as I can find my way back.

Luckily I come upon a stairway on a road close to the nursery school and follow this to a watermelon stand, thinking, good, clear, big landmarks. I turn a corner and see a yellow sign, "Don Ciccicio Ristorante" . Great! Dinner. But wow, the menu is posted in the vestibule and the entrees are depicted Japanese restaurant sushi style. Laminated menus on a gingham background, I am not inspired, and dread this meal. A little pasta con sarde couldn't hurt, even though it looks very unappetizing, it's here, and so am I.

8:15 is a little early for dinner, so I am only one of a dozen diners in this large restaurant.

I guess it will be mostly tourists, why would any local need to see pictures of the "traditional Sicilian fare" that Don Ciccicio offers?

As I am seated, a brown hard boiled egg and a small glass of brown viscous liquid is placed before me. Hmm. Interesting. The egg is a good sign, as I am desperate for some protein and the liquid, being brown, is probably of some alcoholic derivation.

And it is , a little like marsala, a little like vinegar. With the egg it works.

I am wrangling over the few choices on the menu, and with enthusiasm I choose the pasta con sarde. I have high expectations for this dish. My once-almost-mother-in-law was married to a dignified and wonderful Sicilian man for whom she made a fantastic pasta con sarde. Here in Sicily, this ought to be even better.

Well it's not. I miss the plump yellow sultanas of the Milwaukee version and am unhappy with the desiccated black raisins that are their substitute.

The rest of the meal was equally uninspired and the caponata seemed pasteurized, relying too much on tomato sauce instead of tomatoes.

Well, at least I had eaten. Tomorrow is bound to be a better day. A bicycle will mean independence and I will find a better place soon enough.

Pasta con Sarde
not what I ate tonight !
serves 6

Ingredients:
3 -4 tbs olive oil
1 onion, small dice
3 bunches wild fennel or 1 large domesticated
2 tbs. olive oil
4 salted anchovies, boned
2 tbs. tomato paste
1 lb. sardines, cleaned and boned
2 tbs. yellow, sultana* raisins
1 tbs. pine nuts
1 tsp saffron threads
1 lb. Buccatini pasta
1/2 cup toasted bread crumbs, sauteed in 1 Tbs olive oil.
salt & pepper to taste

1. Heat 3-4 tbs of olive oil in large heavy bottomed sauce pan. Saut¿ chopped onion until translucent and slightly carmelized.
2. Add the anchovies and the tomato paste, and then stir briskly until the mixture is homogeneous.
3. Clean the fennel, and chop the greens, and cut the bulb into 1 inch long by 1/2 inch pieces. Boil for 3 minutes in 2 quarts of water. Remove with a slotted spoon. Don't dump the water! Save this for the pasta!
Saute these in another pan with 2 Tbs olive oil, just to give them a nice golden color. They are already soft, so we are just coloring them here.
4. Clean sardines, remove bones and head. This will be mashed up, so don't worry about keeping the fillets intact. Salt and pepper the fish. Add these to the saut¿ed onions.
5. Add fennel, saffron, raisins, pine nuts. Add one cup of the fennel water and simmer for 20 minutes. If this needs more liquid, add a tablespoon of the fennel water one at a time.
6. Bring the reserved fennel water to a boil and toss in the Buccatini (spaghetti can be used as a substitute if you can't find the Buccatini). Follow package instructions, cook till al dente, drain, toss with a bit of olive oil, just enough to lubricate it. Transfer to a serving bowl, pour sauce on top and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Serve thick.


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