Erica De Mane

Sardines at the Campo de’ Fiori Market, Madeline Sorel, 1980.

Recipe: Sarde in Agrodolce

I love whole fried fish, especially very little ones, like sardines. They’re excellent pan fried in breadcrumbs and served hot with fresh lemon, or dredged in flour and deep fried. But I also love some of the more elaborate takes on little fried fish. Sicily’s got a few great ones.

If you’ve been following my recipe posts, you’ll know I’ve been on a Sicilian raisin and pine nut roll. It has not abated. While gazing at lovely silver-skinned sardines fresh from Rhode Island at Citarella the other day, I recalled how much I love them made agrodolce, a Sicilian preparation that, wouldn’t you know it, includes raisins and pine nuts.

Agrodolce, sweet and sour, mostly means very old, pre-tomato dishes down there. Caponata, made with eggplant, is the one the most people are familiar with. When you make agrodolce with sardines, you sauté a copious amount of onion until sweet and melting. Then you mix it with raisins, pine nuts, wine, a splash of vinegar, fresh herbs, a little honey or sugar, and sometimes capers, too. You pour this rich sauce over the just-fried little fish and then, traditionally, leave it all to marinate for about a day before serving it at room temperature. Marinating makes the dish pungent, the vinegar and the sardines coming to the forefront. I like this intense version. It’s great for an antipasto offering along with maybe a glass of Falanghina, a nice, fresh white from Campania that I’m liking a lot lately. But I’ve come to prefer eating the fish hot, right after cooking, so there’s a more unified balance of sweet and sour, the fish gentle and the onion rather pronounced.

For an herb I’ve chosen spearmint, but basil would work well too. The cumin and allspice are my additions, adding a touch of Renaissance flavor to a dish that probably once had it anyway, since many sweet savory Sicilian foods were laced with spices back then.

You’ll notice that I use Japanese rice vinegar, which is obviously not an Italian product. The reason is that I don’t like a very sharp vinegar taste here. The sharper the vinegar, the more it brings out the strong oils in the sardines, making them fishier. This slightly sweet vinegar blends seamlessly with all the other ingredients, resulting, at least to my palate, in a perfect balance of flavors.

Sarde in Agrodolce

(Serves 2)

Extra virgin olive oil
1 Vidalia onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground allspice
2 tablespoons Japanese rice vinegar
¼ cup dry white wine
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
⅓ cup raisins
⅓ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
½ cup all-purpose flour
6 sardines, scaled and gutted but with the heads and tails left on
A handful of mint leaves, lightly chopped, plus a few whole sprigs for garnish

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, and sauté until it’s starting to soften, about 6 minutes. Add the sugar, cumin, and allspice, and sauté a minute to release their flavors. Add the vinegar, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add the wine and the raisins, season with a little salt and black pepper, and let simmer until the onion is quite soft and the sauce has a pleasant agrodolce flavor, about another 5 minutes (it shouldn’t be too sweet, so adjust it with a few extra drops of vinegar if necessary; also make sure some liquid, just a few tablespoons, remains throughout the cooking, and if you see the skillet getting dry at any time, just add a little warm water). Turn off the heat, add the pine nuts, and let the sauce sit in the skillet.

Dry the sardines with paper towels. Pour the flour out on a plate, and season it with salt and black pepper.

In a large skillet, heat about 5 tablespoons of olive oil over high heat.

Dredge the sardines in the flour. When the oil is hot, add the sardines to the skillet, and brown well on one side. Flip them over, lower the heat a bit, and brown them on the other side. Depending on their thickness, the cooking should take about 4 minutes.

Reheat the agrodolce sauce, adding the chopped mint.

Lift the fish from the skillet with a slotted spatula, and place it neatly on a serving dish. Pour the hot sauce on top. Garnish with the mint sprigs, and serve right away.

A mosaic of lemons from the Piazza Armerina, eleventh-century Sicily.

Recipe: Swiss Chard with Yellow Raisins, Lemon Zest, and Pine Nuts

You may have noticed that I’ve lately had a renewed interest in Sicilian flavors. Not that culinary Sicily is ever far from my mind. I routinely let my head travel through the south, working back and forth between Puglia, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily. I refresh myself periodically just to make sure some tastes have not gone dormant or to unearth something previously unknown to me.

I’m now rereading Pomp and Sustenance,  Mary Taylor Simeti’s excellent book on the history of Sicilian cooking. It has got me reexploring the island’s traditional raisin-and-pine-nut combination and thinking about new ways I can use it, or ways I haven’t thought of in a while. My last post was for a pasta dish with swordfish, raisins, and pine nuts, but now I’m thinking green.

In fact I am antsy for spring greens—watercress, baby leeks, dandelions, even those terrible fiddlehead ferns that are always the first thing to show up at New York Greenmarkets, usually in late April. Since there’s nothing local around yet, I trotted over to my supermarket and just picked the nicest looking leafy green vegetable I could find, to give it a Sicilian treatment. I chose Swiss chard, since it was big and ruffly and looked healthy. In addition to the raisin and pine nut duo, I also included a splash of dry Marsala (the fortified wine from Trapani, which I find better to cook with than to drink) and some lemon zest, and I finished it off with a sprinkling of grana Padano, which added a bit of salty sweetness to balance out the astringency of the lemon and the somewhat irony taste of the chard. I served this as a side with roasted rosemary chicken, but you can thin the finished dish with a little pasta cooking water to make a great condimento for any kind of substantial chewy pasta such as penne or cavatelli.

 Swiss Chard with Yellow Raisins, Lemon Zest, and Pine Nuts

(Serves 4 or 5 as a side dish)

⅓ cup yellow raisins
2 tablespoons dry Marsala
2 large bunches Swiss chard, the thick center stalks removed (you can leave some of the more tender stalks) and the leaves roughly chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Salt
⅓ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
Freshly ground black pepper
The grated zest from 1  lemon
1 heaping tablespoon grated grana Padano cheese

Place the raisins in a small cup. Pour on the Marsala, and give them a toss.

Set up a big pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Drop in the chard, and blanch for 2 minutes. Drain the chard into a colander, and run cold water over it to stop the cooking and to bring up its green color. Now squeeze as much excess water as you can from the chard.

Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a large skillet, and get it hot over medium heat. Add the garlic, and sauté just until it gives off a gentle aroma, about 30 seconds. Add the chard, seasoning it with the nutmeg, and sauté quickly, stirring it around a bit. Add the raisins with their Marsala soaking liquid. Take the skillet from the heat, and add salt, the pine nuts, black pepper, and the lemon zest. Transfer to a large serving dish, and sprinkle on the grana Padano, giving the chard a good toss. Serve hot or warm.

Recipe: Bucatini with Swordfish, Raisins, Pine Nuts, and Sweet Breadcrumbs

I have a habit of seeking out and falling in love with dishes that include raisins and pine nuts, dishes from Spain, from Provence, and from Sicily. Historians pretty much agree that this culinary pairing was invented by Arabs and transported to places they invaded, letting this sweet and savory duo mingle with the established cuisine of the invaded, often with fabulous results. Sicily’s famous pasta con le sarde comes to mind, but many of Sicily’s pasta dishes can include this combination, such as pasta with anchovies, or cauliflower, or tuna, or eggplant.

It’s not that pine nuts and raisins didn’t both already exist in Sicily in the 800s, when the Arabs first landed, but I guess it took the Arab cooks, so familiar with mixing fruits and nuts, to use them in new, Sicilian-influenced ways. Sicilian cooking has a lot of sweet in it, one of the culinary features that makes it stand out from the food of the rest of Southern Italy.

Here’s my take on a Arabo-Sicula pasta dish. It of course contains raisins and pine nuts, but I’ve also added fennel, lots of soft onion, anchovies, and lightly sweetened, toasted breadcrumbs to sprinkle on top, a feature very typical of many Sicilian fish and vegetable based pastas, and one that I find completely alluring.

Bucatini with Swordfish, Raisins, Pine Nuts, and Sweet Breadcrumbs

(Serves 2)

Extra-irgin olive oil
½ cup dry homemade breadcrumbs
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A big pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
⅓ cup golden raisins
Enough dry Marsala to cover the raisins
1 large, sweet onion, cut into small dice
6 anchovy fillets, roughly chopped
½ pound bucatini
½ pound swordfish, skinned and cut into little cubes
The feathery tops from 1 fennel bulb, chopped
A few large dill sprigs, chopped
⅓ cup pine nuts, toasted

In a small skillet, heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium flame. Add the breadcrumbs, seasoning them with salt, black pepper, the sugar, and half of the ground fennel. When they just begin to turn golden, after about a minute or so, pull them from the heat, and put them in a small bowl.

Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

Soak the raisins in dry Marsala, just to cover.

In a large skillet, heat about ¼ cup olive oil over medium flame. Add the onions, and let them sauté until softened, about 3 minutes. Now add the anchovies, stirring them around until they melt into the onions. Add the raisins with their Marsala soaking liquid, and let bubble a minute.

Start cooking the bucatini.

Add a little pasta cooking water to the skillet, and let the onions simmer until very soft, about another minute or so. Season very lightly with salt and more aggressively with black pepper.

Toss the swordfish cubes with the remaining ground fennel and a little salt and pepper. Add them to the skillet, and cook gently just until tender, about a minute or so. Turn off the heat, and add half of the chopped fennel tops, half of the dill, and the pine nuts.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain it, saving about a half cup of the cooking water, and place the pasta in a large serving bowl. Toss with a little fresh olive oil. Now pour on the swordfish sauce, and give it a toss, adding a little of the cooking water if needed for moisture. Top with the remaining fennel tops and dill. Serve hot or warm, topping each bowl with a generous amount of the breadcrumbs.

Making ricotta in Sicily.

Recipe: Ricotta Cake with Orange Flower Water and Honey

I really, really like sweetened ricotta. Give me a choice between a cannoli and a slice of chocolate cake, and I’ll take the cannoli. But give me the choice between a cannoli and a slice of ricotta cake, and, although highly tempted by both, I’ll inevitably chose the ricotta cake. I really love ricotta cakes, but I’ve never baked them much, until now.

Previously I only made them for Easter or Christmas, since the classic Southern Italian version is quite time-consuming, with its pounds and pounds of ricotta, deep pastry crust, and latticework top, not to mention the long-soaked wheat berries you need for a Pastiera, the Easter version. It’s really just as well these things show up only on holidays. They’re a 10-ton load. I now say forget about all that pastry. Just make the cake without it. It’s elegant, less dense, less fattening, and, I swear to you, this version takes 5 to 8 minutes to assemble. I thought hard about what would be the fastest, simplest way to make a ricotta cake without compromising on texture or flavor and decided that if I made use of two of my favorite electric kitchen gadgets, this cake could be a whiz to throw together. And it was.

Ricotta cakes can include a slew of flavorings, such as candied citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate chips (in my opinion an abomination that has no place in one of these things), vanilla, lemon or orange zest, and, my favorite of all, orange flower water. For my streamlined version, I left out all the chunky candied stuff and focused on the orange flower water. To me a ricotta cake is incomplete without it. And it blends beautifully with honey, which I also added.

All the ingredients except the egg whites get pulsed smooth in a food processor, which takes under a minute. The egg whites then get whipped in my standing mixer (or you can use an electric hand mixer). Then you fold the two things together and pour them into a spring-mold pan. The cake is light and fragrant, and you don’t have to wait for Easter to make it, although you can make it for Easter, if you have a group that’s flexible about tradition.

Ricotta Cake with Orange Flower Water and Honey

1 tablespoon or so of softened butter, to grease the pan
6 extra large eggs
½ cup sugar
½ cup orange blossom honey
A big pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon orange flower water
The grated zest from 1 large lemon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 large container whole milk ricotta (about 30 ounces)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

Grease a 9-inch spring-form pan with the butter.

Separate the eggs, placing the yolks in a food processor and the whites in the bowl for a mixer (either a standing or handheld one).

Add the sugar, honey, salt, vanilla, orange flower water, and lemon zest to the food processor, and give it a few good pulses. Now add the ricotta and the nutmeg, and process until the mixture is smooth. Pour it into a large bowl.

Whip the egg whites until they achieve the classic stiff peak stage.

Add half the egg whites to the bowl, and gently fold them in. Now add the rest of the egg whites, and fold until just blended.

Pour this into the greased pan, and bake until the cake is browned and puffy and feels fairly firm in the center, about 50 minutes to an hour.

Place the cake on a rack. It’ll immediately deflate a bit, but that’s normal. Let it cool, and then remove the rim of the pan.