Spicy Sicilian spaghetti with scallops

My father chanced upon this spicy Sicilian spaghetti with scallops in Palermo in the 1960s and it's been a family favourite ever since. It's brimming with flavours—scallops, anchovies, peperoncino, capers, shallots, and more—but takes less than 30 minutes to make. Above all, good quality olive oil is the star. It's a healthy, easy option perfect for hot weather.

Spice me nice

My father first came upon this dish in Palermo in 1965, where he recorded it in one of his journals. He later added footnotes detailing pretty much the same recipe, with very small differences, in both Puglia and Calabria.

In this case he didn't need to use his charms to get his hands on the recipe because the chef cooked it from scratch pretty much in front of him while he and some friends sat at the counter in a small traditional hole-in-the-wall eatery in one of the side streets off the old docks. But the chef, noticing my father craning his neck to see how the dish was being prepared, was more than happy to share his recipe, which he described as a familiar spaghetti dish in many Sicilian households.

It's a recipe of extreme simplicity, bordering on minimalist in the quantities of ingredients, a kind of local cucina povera born of stretching relatively small amounts of good, healthy ingredients to feed many mouths. I have loved this recipe ever since my father would cook it for us during childhood, and it was one of the seminal Italian recipes he taught me because I loved it so much, doubling as a lesson in how to efficiently prize scallops from their shells. Jangling a big, dripping string basket of fresh scallops, he'd impishly stage-bellow to my mother from the kitchen: "Yes, my beloved, I am giving our firstborn a really sharp knife!" Then he would wink at me.

I still love it, especially in warmer months. It's filling, but also easily digested given its simple ingredients cooked quickly and simply.

Sicily and other southern parts of the Italian Peninsula are notable for the Moorish influences in their cuisine, including the use of hot chillies and other spices seen as "Middle Eastern" through a contemporary lens. While this version is mildly piquant, it can certainly be ramped up if you prefer hotter dishes simply by adding more peperoncini. The Sicilian version also shows that North African influence in its inclusion of turmeric whereas the Calabrians apparently prefer to use saffron in their versions. Your choice.

Sauce or oil?

Essentially, this is not so much a "sauce" as extra virgin or virgin olive oil itself being what coats the spaghetti; almost like a cooked dressing. Quite obviously, this is a great dish for those who are lactose-intolerant.

Some key points to getting this dish right are detailed in the coloured box below. But there are some other points I think important to highlight. Firstly it's key to use shallots—or echalion (banana) shallots—because they have a subtler flavour and cook faster than onions. Secondly, the cloves of garlic are used more like an actual vegetable ingredient than mere flavour agents here, thus it's essential the cloves are thinly sliced not chopped, crushed or grated. As with the peperoncino chilli, add slightly more garlic if you wish to dial up its flavour. In the quantities in this recipe, the dish is fairly mild.

On the peperoncini front, my father's later footnotes detail that in the Calabrian versions, which are spicier than the one he discovered in Palermo, they tend to use a teaspoon of minced hot peperoncini and/or use chilli-infused olive oil for the first part of the cooking in addition to a chopped fresh peperoncino. As with practically all chillies, peperoncino chillies come in a range of varieties ranging from mild to very spicy—such as 'Diabolo', 'Moruga Scorpion' and newer hybrids such as 'Viagra' (I kid you not). So, be sure you know how hot yours are before throwing them into the pan.

There's another important note on this "sauce". It takes barely 10 to 12mins to cook. But be sure to have all you ingredients prepared in advance. It's vital that the cooked, drained pasta is immediately added to the pan for finishing while the oil is hot. So, while it cooks quickly, there are a lot of moving parts to manage to pull this dish off. Note that this prep should also include preparing any salads or sides in advance because this is one of those dishes where the pasta should be served almost immediately once ready.

Fishy business

The chef who gave my father this recipe told him that it was always made with smaller scallops because Sicilians would consider it wasteful to use large scallops better savoured on their own. He stressed to not sear them to the point that their tops and bottoms actually turn golden as one might want with large scallops because this makes smaller scallops shrink too much. He also told my father that while he might encounter some "lazy" local kitchens that seared the scallops in olive oil, good chefs knew from the wisdom of preceding generations that the combination of the butter and lemon juice in which the scallops are seared brings something special to the subtle flavours of the overall dish.

Also, the otherwise laidback chef stressed that before you add the scallops to the butter, ensure they are rinsed, drained and fully dry, patting down with paper towels if necessary.

Something else he made sure that my father noticed was that he was using the kind of anchovies preserved in olive oil, not salted or fresh, because you actually use a little of the anchovy-infused olive oil from the bottle or tin in the later stages of cooking.

He told my father that this dish was often cooked with mussels or cubes of seared tuna or swordfish as an alternative to scallops. But remember, he warned, one of the key reasons that this dish evolved is that the star of the show is the olive oil itself. Scallops have a fairly "neutral" flavour and anchovies are in a class all of their own i.e. they don't taste"fishy" or "seafoody". But, though relatively mild on the "fishy" flavours, these other sea-dwellers do push things away from the clarity of the olive oil itself. This is why a lot of Sicilian sauces with other seafoods or fish with more distinctive marine flavours use cream or tomato passata as more dominant ingredients: the battle to have the olive oil as a lead flavour is already over when you go for the "fishy" fruits de mer.

In Sicily and other regions in Southern Italy, I have always seen this dish made with spaghetti or very thin linguine. This makes complete sense since there is effectively no "sauce" to cling ideally to thicker or wider pastas.

This version is for 3 to 4 diners, depending on appetite and any side dishes. But, you can easily scale it up for a larger group—as long are you have a pan big enough in which to finish the al dente pasta.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• Although the cooking is simple and quick, it takes a little planning to make sure that everything comes together in a timely fashion. There are two key points to doing this successfully. Firstly, do the prep of all of your ingredients ahead of cooking the dish because the cooking process moves quickly. And, check how long your spaghetti (or linguine) will take to cook. Work backwards from there to work out the timing of the sauce and searing the scallops prior to adding to the sauce.

• The quantities of vegetables may seem frugal. Don't be tempted to massively increase them. Similarly all of the vegetable ingredients are cut smaller than would be the case in many Italian recipes. There are reasons for both. Firstly, you want the vegetables to cook properly within the 10 to 12mins it takes your pasta to cook. Secondly, larger, heavier pieces of vegetables will not cling to the pasta evenly. And, finally, the star of the show here is the oil itself and it should not be overshadowed.

• For this recipe good quality olive oil is essential, either extra virgin or virgin. I prefer to use virgin olive oil because I find its slightly stronger flavour works better in this dish, but it's a matter of personal taste. Also, pay attention to how the oil is added in different stages because it makes a difference to both the final flavours and how effectively it clings to the spaghetti.

Shopping list

for the spicy Sicilian spaghetti with scallops

• Approx. 240-270g (dried) or 270-300g (fresh) spaghetti (or linguine)

• Approx. 200g small raw scallops; shelled and rinsed

• 50g anchovies; the kind bottled or tinned in olive oil, roughly chopped

• 5 or 6 shallots; peeled, halved and thinly sliced

• 7 or 8 ripe baby plum tomatoes; finely diced

• 1 sweet red pepper (or small red bell pepper); finely diced

• 1 fresh peperoncino chilli; split and finely sliced

• ¼ tspn turmeric powder

• 3 tspns whole small capers; slightly bruised

• A large clutch of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped

• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic; very finely sliced, not grated or crushed

• 5 to 6 tbspns virgin olive oil (or extra virgin olive oil)

• Approx. 100ml dry white wine

• The juice and pulp of ½ a fresh lemon

• 1½ tbspns unsalted butter

• 1 tbspn Italian anchovy sauce (or Worcestershire sauce)

• salt and pepper to taste

Side dishes

I'm serving it here with a side salad of fresh baby spinach and mixed leaves, croutons and flakes of Parmigiano Reggiano with a sticky balsamic glaze. This is heavier and richer than the side salads I usually serve with pasta dishes, but I find it a nice contrast with the simplicity of the main spaghetti dish.

Of course you can serve it with basically any form of side salad you prefer, if any at all. In Sicily it is also often served with warm lemon flatbreads.

Cooking Method

the spicy Sicilian spaghetti with scallops

1. Use a large pan with steeply curved sides—I use a wok—with a lid. This is because this concentrates the oil and modest quantities of ingredients at the base of the pan; where you want to cook them rapidly and appropriately. Add half of the olive oil and heat on a medium heat. When hot, add the shallots and peperoncino. Sauté, stirring

2. As soon a the shallots begin to soften, add the sliced garlic and stir in, cooking for a minute or so. When it too begins to turn glassy, add the sweet red pepper and stir in. As soon as the sweet pepper begins to soften—a minute or so—add half of the wine and allow it to cook off, stirring regularly

3. Once the wine cooks off—probably less than a minute—add the tomatoes and all of their juices, even though there will be very little juice with baby plum tomatoes. Stir in and as soon as all the tomatoes are coated in the juices, add the remainder of the wine. Cover and slightly reduce to a low-medium heat

4. While these ingredients are cooking down, heat the butter in a small frying pan on a medium-high heat. When it begins to bubble, add the scallops. After 30secs, turn them over. Add the lemon juice. Season with a little coarsely ground black pepper. Stir regularly, cooking for about 2mins in total; cooked but not yet turning golden. Remove from the heat. Uncover the large pan and pour all the juices from the scallop pan into the large pan. Then cover the scallops to keep warm and place to one side

5. Cook in the butter and juices from the scallops for about 30secs. Add the turmeric, the anchovy sauce and capers, and stir in. Allow any liquid in the pan to cook down. About 1min before your spaghetti is ready to be drained, add a tablespoon of the oil from the anchovy can/bottle and stir in. As soon as your spaghetti is ready, add 3tbspns of the "pasta water" from its pot to the sauce and increase to a medium heat

6. Drain your al dente pasta. While it's draining, check whether the sauce needs additional salt and season if so, bearing in mind the anchovies will add additional saltiness. Then immediately add the hot spaghetti to the pan. Pour the remaining olive oil over it and mix the pasta and the sauce. Before the oil has been fully absorbed, add the chopped parsley. Continue to spread the ingredients evenly through the spaghetti, removing from the heat as soon as they are evenly distributed

7. Add the chopped anchovies and seared scallops, mixing these in too. Cover and allow to stand for barely a minute so the anchovies and scallops are heated by the pasta

8. Plate and take to table with any side dishes

Alternatives

This is a pescatarian dish by default and often made with pescatarian alternatives for those who don't like or can't eat scallops (see above).

Nonetheless in Sicily a vegetable version is often made with the same ingredients but without seafood or anchovies, particularly as a lunch or a pasta course for a larger meal. Technically, it isn't vegan or vegetarian, because it still uses the anchovy sauce. However, that's easily remedied. Either use mushroom ketchup— it gives the closest flavour to the original—or vegan Worcestershire sauce or half a tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce mixed with half a tablespoon of white wine vinegar. I find that miso makes the umami aspect a little overpowering, masking the joy of the olive oil.

Something that I think works wonderfully with a vegan version is to add a handful of toasted sunflower seeds around the same time you add the parsley in the recipe above.

For obsessive carnivores, you can replace the scallops with chopped bresaola. The biggest challenge is to actually find thick-cut bresaola that can be cut into suitable little cubes. Add these about 1min before you add the pasta which gives it time to soften enough but not mess with the special showcasing of the olive oil. Having tried it with pancetta and other cured porks, I think it rather defeats the whole point of this dish. Sure, it's tasty, but the fat in pork totally masks the "olive oil-ness" that is the signature of this dish.

Pairings

Being seafood, I tend to default in the direction of whites and rosé wines. But, I have noticed that I am largely influenced by how spicy I make the dish; quite literally the peperoncino content.

Weirdly, if doing this milder Sicilian version, partly because of the subtle flavour of scallops, I tend towards quieter whites than those belters for which Sicily is famed. My recommendation for best bang-for-buck is Sa Raja Kintari Vermentino di Gallura. This Sardinian white—Sardinian Vermentinos are an overall category recommendation for this dish—has been consistently good over numerous vintages. It's got enough flint and citrus to stand up to the peperoncino, but there are also soft fruits in there—pears, melon—that sit well with the scallops.

Conversely, if I take it in a more Calabrese direction, ramping up the heat, I tend to go for Sicilian whites. Maybe it is just an association with smouldering volcanos, but one that I think is consistently good with a more fiery version is Planeta Etna Bianco. It also has the citrus and soft fruit balance to cut through the chilli and blow a kiss to the scallops. But there is something smoky—grown in volcanic soil, duh!—and a bit like wokked ginger in there that really works well as something to quaff with a mouth heated by chillies.

On a more workaday occasions when I don't have time to plan ahead, there are a lot of those piss-yellow Sicilian Catarrattos out there that work. A word of advice: if any florid marketing blurb on the label positions it as an alternative to Pinot Grigio, run for the hills. It's the last thing you want in a Catarratto. No, rather you want a complete thug of a Catarratto, one of those high-acidity numbers running protection rackets since knee-high to a grasshopper. I can't remember names, but you know the type...

One of the reasons I default to Sicilian wines with dishes on the spiciest end of the spectrum of Italian cuisine is that while Calabria is arguably the home to the spiciest cuisine on the Italian Peninsula, my limited experience of Calabrian wines has yet to reveal those that implicitly work with spicy Italian dishes. Great wines, certainly, and good with other dishes, but spicy dishes? Hmm, not so much. The one curveball—because it does not really fit the profile—is Ceraudo Grisara Bianco. It's got a big voice and is very dry. Perhaps it's that almost aniseed note that makes it work.

While I remain convinced that there is an Italian rosato out there that will work with this dish, my efforts to date with rosé wines from Sicily, Calabria and Puglia have proven underwhelming. Too much strawberry action, something I think works neither with chilli nor scallops. The surprise German outlier has been Meyer - Näkel Spätburgunder Rosé. Sure, it has all that fruity business going on, but it's very dry with high acidity and a notable minerality, and hints of white pepper that somehow work.

I don't like beer with this dish. I have tried different beers on various occasions working to the established wisdom that beer works well with spicy dishes. But, I always come to the same conclusion: beer kills the flavour of scallops unless they're cooked in beer such as in some Scottish recipes. More importantly, it blunts the showcase flavour of the olive oil.

My tip for the best non-alcoholic options: avoid citrus and instead go for palette-cleansing cucumber water. Sparkling or still, it really keeps the keynote flavours in the room.