Something Fishy

I have no idea why this dish seemed appealing to me - fish on pasta? First I read about it when Mark Bittman made it. I thought, "Huh, now that sounds interesting." Then, I happened across a similar recipe on epicurious.com. I do like canned sardines - they are one of my guilty pleasures - but it somehow didn't seem like something I'd usually make.

However, I was intrigued enough to try it. Bittman adds capers to his, where epicurious.com relies simply on garlic and fresh parsley to flavor their version. Since I didn't have capers in the house... yeah, epicurious.com won.

This is very simple, fishy fare. All you do is drain a little oil from the can of sardines packed in olive oil (I found a brand of local, wild caught ones) and add to that some plain olive oil in which you sauté a hefty amount of garlic. When the garlic is soft, you add a cup and a half of dry white wine and boil it down by half to make a sauce, toss in the fresh parsley off the heat, add the pasta to the sauce for a few minutes before plating, split the fillets over the mound of pasta (they called for linguine; I had vermicelli) and pour over rest of the sauce. Serve with lemon wedges. One can of sardines, a tablespoon of olive oil, four cloves of garlic, 1-1/2 cups white wine, 1 cup chopped Italian parsley, a handful of pasta - that's it.

Next time I make this, as I will surely do, I will grate just a little Parmesano Reggiano over the pasta before placing the fillets. While it was good and hearty and I loved the fresh greenness of the parsley playing off the oily fish, it lacked a little je ne sais quoi that I think it needed. Still, it was interesting, in a fishy sort of way.