Sicilian · Starter
Sarde a Beccafico alla Palermitana
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, acid holding everything up to the light, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 800g fresh sardines, scaled, boned and butterflied, tails left on
- 150g coarse dry breadcrumbs
- 50g sultanas, soaked and drained
- 50g pine nuts
- 4 salted anchovy fillets, rinsed and chopped
- 20g caster sugar
- 100ml extra virgin olive oil
- juice and zest of 1 orange
- juice of 1 lemon
- 30 fresh bay leaves
- a handful of flat parsley, chopped
- salt and black pepper
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Soaking dried goods back to life
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toast the breadcrumbs in 50ml of the oil over medium heat, stirring until they are the colour of toffee and smell nutty, then spread them out and cool them completely.
- Mix the cold crumb with the pine nuts, sultanas, anchovy, parsley, orange zest and pepper until it holds when squeezed in the fist but crumbles when dropped.
- Lay each sardine skin down, set a heaped teaspoon of stuffing at the head end and roll towards the tail so the tail stands up, then pack the rolls into an oiled dish with a bay leaf standing between each one.
- Whisk the orange juice, lemon juice, sugar and remaining oil until cloudy and pour it around the rolls, not over them.
- Bake at 200C (400F) for 12 minutes, until the skins are taut and bronzed and a roll gives no resistance at the centre, then serve just warm. 12 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Fino or Manzanilla Sherry
- Also Right
- Muscadet or dry Riesling
- From the Taps
- Pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
Salt-cured fish wants a bone-dry, saline partner: Sherry and Atlantic whites answer the cure without fighting it.
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