Pasta chî sàrdi

Pasta chî sàrdi is the Palermitan name for pasta with sardines, and it is the clearest surviving record of Arab cooking in Sicilian food. Fresh sardines and wild fennel supply the base; saffron, sultanas and pine nuts supply the layer that arrived from North Africa during the ninth-century emirate. A widely repeated story credits the invention to a cook feeding the general Euphemius after a landing at Mazara, though the tale is folklore rather than documentation. What is verifiable is the season: finocchietto selvatico, the wild fennel fronds that carry the dish, grow on Sicilian hillsides in spring, and a version made with cultivated fennel bulb or seeds in October is a different and thinner thing.