Today I decided to make a gluten free recipe inspired by the famous “pasta con le sarde”, a dish that is typical of Sicily.
I have always loved it and I tried to make it easier and quick but still full of that flavour that makes it so unique.
In the original recipe they use fresh sardines but I thought to save some time and got mine canned, organic and with extra virgin olive oil. They were from Portugal and very good.
The Scottish brand Pulsetta was very nice to send me some of its gluten free vegan bread crumbs to try and I loved them!
They use milled pulses to bake their bread like peas and lentils, and this makes it tasty and full of nutritious benefits.
I decided to use them for this recipe as bread crumbs are an important part of the dish so they got to be good.
Take one large non-stick pan and toast the pine nuts over low heat. Once they are ready, put them aside and toast the bread crumbs.
Put the sultanas in a small glass with water for about 10 minutes in order to have them tender and soft.
Use the same pan, this time add 3 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil, the cloves of garlic that you have previously peeled and cut in two halves and put it over low heat.
Once the garlic has turned golden, remove it from the pan and add the sardines without the oil from the tin. Turn the heat over medium and stir gently for about five minutes.
Turn the heat off and put the pan aside.
Let’s start cooking the pasta. Take one large pot with water and put it over medium heat. Add the dill and when the water is about to boil, remove it. The dill in hot water will flavour the water and so the pasta.
When the water is boiling, add the spaghetti and a pinch of salt.
As a personal advice, don’t trust the minutes written on the package, it is very rare that they correspond to how you like the pasta (al dente or not). I suggest you do it as I do, start tasting it after the first 3/4 minutes… it helps :-).
Chop some fresh dill and put it aside.
Once the spaghetti are ready, drip them by saving a coffee cup of the water where you cooked them.
Put the spaghetti and the water in the pan along with the sardines. Put the pan back over medium high heat for 2/3 minutes. Stir gently until the water has fully evaporated.
Turn the heat off, add the dill, the pine nuts, the sultanas, half of the bread crumbs and 2 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil per dish.
Use the rest of the bread crumbs to decorate your dish.
Buon Appetito!
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Ingredients
Recipe for 2 :
– 200 gr of gluten free spaghetti
– 120 gr of sardines
– 30 gr of sultanas
– 30 gr of pine nuts
– 50 gr of bread crumbs
– 2 cloves of garlic
– dill
– 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
– salt
Recipe by Chiara
