Canned sardines are salty, rich, and ready to eat; they dissolve into a sauce with pasta and become something warm and substantial. Roland sardines have the oil you need to dress the whole dish.

Serves 2. 20 minutes, 15 at the stove.

About 330 calories a serving, 13 g protein, 65 g carbohydrate, 2 g fat. From USDA figures for 60% of the ingredients; amounts are the recipe's.

Cook mode

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and salt it generously. Drop in 6 oz of pasta and stir to separate the strands.
2. While the pasta cooks, mince 3 cloves of garlic. Pour the sardine tin with its oil into a cold pan, add the minced garlic, and set over medium heat until the garlic turns pale gold and the sardines begin to break apart, about 3 minutes.
3. When the pasta is al dente, scoop out 1 cup of the cooking water before draining. Add the hot pasta to the sardine pan along with 1/2 cup of the reserved cooking water and stir gently until the sardines dissolve and coat the strands, adding more cooking water if the pasta seems dry. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.

Note Swap fresh anchovy fillets if you have them, prepared the same way. Leftovers keep three days in a covered bowl in the fridge and warm gently in a pan with a splash of water. Serve with a wedge of lemon and coarse bread to soak the sauce, or pour it into a white bowl and eat it as is.