Sardine Pasta with Bread Crumbs and Capers



I inventoried the freezer last weekend, put it on a spreadsheet and printed that puppy with the intent to post it on the freezer door.  I know, a very exciting life, eh?  It needed done.  It’s good to know there are four pints of chicken broth and two gallons of chanterelle mushrooms.  Specially cause my kids will be home for Christmas, (yeah, I have two now as my girl got married in Feb.) so I can cook some really, really good stuff! 

There were a few mystery items on the shelves, one being a packet of ice cube tray size I don’t know what.  It has to be something really good or I wouldn’t have taken the time to freeze it in that manner.  I have absolutely no recollection of cooking the mystery ingredient – or freezing it.  I’ll have to thaw one cube…  And strive to write an identifying tag as these goodies as they go into deep freeze.

It seems appropriate that I tried a Mark Bittman recipe “Sardine Pasta with Bread Crumbs and Capers” tonight, from what he calls “pantry items.”  I neglected to save the entire recipe so had to do a little searching and came across one calling for small, skinned, boned sardines.  Good luck with that.  Sardines keep making appearances in the recipes I’ve browsed including one in pate form, that’s making the Christmas appetizer menu.   

I ran a description of the recipe by Melissa who thought it would be marginally palatable if the intact spinal column wasn’t visible.  She is so picky, no wonder she’s so skinny. 


Sardine Pasta with Bread Crumbs and Capers

Ingredients


1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 onion, chopped
1 lb long pasta
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 T drained capers
2 cans sardines in oil
1/2 c chopped parsley

Directions
Bring large pot of water to boil and salt it. Put half the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When it's hot, add bread crumbs and cook, stirring frequently,until golden and fragrant, less than 5 minutes, then remove. Add remaining oil and onion to pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, add pasta to boiling water and cook until just tender; drain, reserving some of the cooking liquid. Turn the heat under the onions to medium high and add lemon zest, capers and sardines; cook, stirring occasionally, until just heated through, about 2 minutes.
Add pasta to sardine mixture and toss well. Add parsley, most of the bread crumbs and some reserved water, if necessary, to moisten. Taste and adjust seasoning, garnishing with more parsley and bread crumbs. Makes 6 servings

Number of Servings: 6

The breadcrumbs really added to the overall texture and were a nice touch. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tastes like Chicken

Image
  Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure.  There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.   Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island.  He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d  nonchalantly balance in a squat to  husk a coconut wit...
Read more

Ethel strikes back

Image
  Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day.  It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside.  She kept going and there was another one.  Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside.   My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach.   It took many years for that paint to fade.  
Read more

Pasta ala Norcina from America's Test Kitchen

Image
I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.   Any recipe from their site that I’ve cooked has turned out beautifully.   The great thing is they do all the testing and tweaking so all I have to do is follow the recipe.   At least the first time. A recipe for sausage and pasta recently aired.   I limit pasta in my diet these days, but every once in a while I’ll indulge.   And this recipe looked so good I made a mental note to cook if for Terry, being certain he’d love it. Then a friend who’d suffered a serious illness was released from the hospital, and here was my opportunity to give this a try.    I doubled the recipe, filled a large casserole for my friend, then one for Terry, and had enough left just for me, me, me.   And it is superb! Four fork review from all who were treated to this dish. It's not real pretty but the rosemary spiced sausage makes me forget that. Serves 6 White mushrooms may be substituted f...
Read more