Pasta con le sarde is a typical dish of Sicilian cuisine.
It is seasonal: it is enjoyed from March to September, when ↪️ in the fish market there are freshly caught sardines and ↪️ wild fennel can be found in the vast fields of the Sicilian hinterland.
There are many variations of this pasta.
According to Sicilian tradition, pasta with sardines was invented by an Arab chef of the general Eufemio da Messina during the Arab military campaign in the area of Syracuse. The cook had to feed the numerous troops, but he was in dire straits, so he had to make a dish with what the place offered him. So he combined the fish, namely sardines, and the flavors of the earth: wild fennel and walnuts. Eufemio’s dish is today considered the first “mountain and sea” dish in the history of Mediterranean gastronomy, placing different products (of the sea and the mountain) on the same plate.
Today the Italian visiting chefs Lorentzo Muratore & Girolamo Ganci in collaboration with Despina Aivazidou of Simos Pizza House create the Sicilian pasta con le sarde but also a Sicilian pizza full of meaning and tasty scherzo!
Come and Enjoy!