Sardine Pasta al Limone

This is the one we make when there is nothing in the house, which is a lie, because there is always a drawer full of tins in the house. What we mean is: nothing fresh. No plan. Eight o'clock and a mild sense of grievance.

Spaghetti, one tin of sardines, a lemon. Twenty minutes, and most of that is waiting for water to boil. The only step that takes any thought is the crumb, and the crumb is the entire reason this dish is worth writing down.

Ingredients

Serves two, generously.

• 200 g spaghetti
• 1 tin of sardines in olive oil, about 120 g. Use a good one, this is the whole dish
• 2 banana shallots, sliced as finely as your patience allows
• 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 unwaxed lemon, zest and juice
• 100 ml dry white wine
• 40 g coarse breadcrumbs, preferably torn from stale bread rather than a packet
• A handful of flat parsley
• Chilli flakes, olive oil, salt, black pepper

Method

1. Make the crumb first. Heat the oven to 180 °C. Take two sardine fillets from the tin and mash them with the breadcrumbs, the zest of half the lemon, a spoonful of the tin's oil and a pinch of salt. It will look unpromising. Persevere.
2. Spread it thin on a sheet of baking parchment. Thin, in a rough single layer, not a mound. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until it is dry, golden and smells like the best part of a fish restaurant. Leave it to cool and crisp, then break it up with your fingers.
3. Water on. Salt it properly. It should taste of the sea, which in this context is not a metaphor.
4. In a wide pan, warm a generous glug of olive oil and soften the shallots over a low heat for a good 8 minutes, until sweet and collapsing. Add the garlic and a pinch of chilli for the last minute. Do not let the garlic colour.
5. Pour in the wine and let it bubble down to almost nothing.
6. Cook the spaghetti until just short of al dente, then lift it straight into the pan with tongs, bringing a good splash of pasta water with it.
7. Add the rest of the sardines, broken into large pieces, along with the oil from the tin. Squeeze in the juice of half the lemon. Toss hard over the heat, adding pasta water a splash at a time until the sauce goes from oily to glossy. That change is the dish. Keep going until it happens.
8. Off the heat. Parsley, the rest of the lemon zest, black pepper. Taste. It probably wants more lemon.
9. Plate it, then shower the crumb over the top at the table so it stays crisp.

Notes from making it too many times

Do not skip the crumb. We know it is an extra pan and an extra ten minutes. Without it this is a perfectly nice lemon pasta with fish in it. With it, there is crunch against the soft, and toasted against the bright, and the whole thing stops being a fridge raid and becomes something you would put in front of someone you are trying to impress.

Use the oil in the tin. Every time. That oil has spent months getting acquainted with the fish and it is the most flavourful thing in your kitchen. Pouring it down the sink is a small tragedy that happens in thousands of homes daily.

Break the fish late and roughly. Stir sardines into a hot pan early and they dissolve into a paste. Add them at the end, in big pieces, and you get actual bites of fish. You bought a good tin. Let it be recognisable.

It wants more lemon than you think. The oil is rich and the fish is savoury and the lemon is the only thing standing between you and a very heavy bowl of pasta. Be braver than feels sensible.

One tin. One lemon. Twenty minutes. This is the argument for keeping the drawer full.