Colorful Pasta from Italy

My husband and I went to Amalfi, Italy last May for his 40th birthday. Of course by the end of the trip, my suite case was filled with food items rather than new shoes or cloth. My focus was so in food in this trip and it was such a memorable trip (and I put few ponds on myself).

One item that I purchased was this lovely colorful pasta. I fell in love with this at first site. These leaf shaped pasta look so delicate and I instantly imaging what would be the best sauce for this pasta.
Something has to be very simple but has some crunchy texture would be lovely.

This week, I found the fennel bulb for the first time since I arrived here. And of course I had to buy bunch (and paid the premium price but I don't even want to know how much I spent on them) and I realized that this is the ingredients that I have been waiting for to pair with this colorful pasta,

When I went home, I looked for the pasta recipe with fennel and I found this one from my epicurious recipe box - "pasta with anchovies, currants, fennel and pine nuts".

There are few things that I did not follow the recipe just because some of the ingredients were not available. I use dried cranberries instead of current and use pistachio instead of pine nuts. And of course, I use this colorful pasta. The one thing that I was wrong about this pasta was these are not actually delicate pasta. They were much more dense than I expected. The flavor of this dish was very unique. When you look at the list of the ingredients, you see there are so many strong flavors there. But surprisingly they all compliment each other very well. Maybe a little too dramatic for my taste... but overall, it was very satisfying dish. More than the flavor, I enjoyed the multiple levels of crunchiness. It was playful in my mouth.

Recipe: Pasta with anchovies, currants, fennel and pine nuts