Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [91]
For 8 servings
1½ to 2 pounds assorted fresh fish heads, from such fish as sea bass, red snapper, or porgie
⅔ cup extra virgin olive oil
⅓ cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
¼ cup chopped parsley
⅓ cup dry white wine
1½ cups canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1½ pounds pasta
2 tablespoons butter
Recommended pasta Spaghetti is an ideal carrier for the full flavor of the sauce, but other very good choices are short, tube-shaped macaroni, such as penne and rigatoni.
1. Wash all the fish heads in cold water, then set aside to drain in a colander.
2. Choose a sauté pan that can subsequently accommodate all the fish heads without stacking or overlapping them. Put in the olive oil and the chopped onion, turn on the heat to medium, and cook the onion, stirring, until it is translucent. Add the garlic and sauté until it becomes colored a pale gold. Add half the chopped parsley (2 tablespoons), stir once or twice, then put in the fish heads.
3. Turn the heads over to coat them well, then add the wine, letting it come to a lively simmer. When it has bubbled away for a minute or less, add the cut-up tomatoes with their juice, salt, and black pepper, and stir, turning over all the ingredients in the pan. Adjust heat to cook at a gentle simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Remove the heads from the pan. With a small spoon, scoop out as much of the meat as comes away easily, particularly at the cheeks and the throat, putting it aside in a small bowl or saucer for later.
5. Loosen and discard all the larger bones. Fit the food mill with the disk with the largest holes and mash the remainder of the heads through it, letting the pulp drop into the sauté pan.
6. Turn the heat on again, adjusting it to cook at a very gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens to a dense, creamy consistency. Add the small pieces of meat you had scooped out of the heads, stir, and cook for 5 minutes more.
7. Toss cooked drained pasta with the entire contents of the pan, add the remaining chopped parsley and the butter, toss again, and serve at once.
Ahead-of-time note Everything can be prepared several hours in advance up to this point. Pour a little bit of the sauce from the pan over the meat from the fish heads that had been set aside and cover the bowl or saucer with plastic wrap.
Sicilian Sardine Sauce
THE COOKING of Sicily dazzles us with its fluent use of a more vivid vocabulary of ingredients than any other cuisine in Italy is accustomed to command. Take Palermo’s pasta con le sarde—pasta with sardines—a dish that takes the fragrances of saffron and of wild mountain fennel, the pungencies of sardines and anchovies, the nectar of raisins, and the toasty quality of nuts, and merges them into a full-throated chorus of appetite-stirring harmony.
To achieve a reasonable facsimile of pasta con le sarde, one must be prepared to make substantial compromises: Fresh sardines, although they do exist, make rare and unpredictable appearances and may have to be replaced by canned sardines; outside of northern California, where wild fennel can be found from spring through summer, we have to make do with the tops of cultivated finocchio.
For 4 to 6 servings
1 pound fresh sardines OR 8 ounces, net weight, drained choice canned sardines packed in olive oil
2 cups finocchio leaf tops (see note below) OR 1¾ cups fresh wild fennel
Salt
1 tablespoon black raisins
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped onion
4 flat anchovy fillets (preferably the ones prepared at home), chopped fine
⅓ cup pignoli (pine nuts)
1½ tablespoons tomato paste, dissolved in 1 cup lukewarm water together with a large pinch of powdered saffron OR ½ teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 to 1½ pounds pasta
½ cup dry, unflavored