Sarde in saor PAT — Veneto, Italy

Sarde in saor pairs fried sardines with a sweet-and-sour onion marinade, built on vinegar, sugar, pine nuts and raisins; saor simply means flavor or seasoning in the Venetian dialect. The fish is fried first, then layered with the cooked onions and left to rest so the marinade soaks through before serving. It is reported from Venice and the wider Veneto, and is also found in Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In Venice it is closely tied to the bacari, small wine bars where it is served as a cicchetto, a small snack eaten standing with a glass of wine. Sardines are cleaned, floured and fried until crisp, then set aside to drain. Sliced onions are cooked slowly in oil until soft, then simmered briefly with vinegar and a little sugar to build the sweet-sour base. Pine nuts and raisins, softened beforehand in water, are stirred in, and the sardines are layered with the onion mixture in a dish, covered and left in a cool place for at least a day before serving cold. The dish is defined less by a fixed set of quantities than by the balance between vinegar's sharpness and the sugar and raisins' sweetness, which each household or bacaro tunes to its own taste. Some cooks add a splash of sweet wine to the marinade, and the resting time can stretch from one day to several, since the flavor is said to deepen the longer the sardines sit in the onions.