First things first: I was looking through the gourmet cheese section of our local grocery store, as I typically do because I am a snob, when I came across a package of crème fraiche that was on clearance. So, I decided on the spot to get it and figure out what to do with it later.
A caveat before we get started: I probably used too much salmon for this recipe, so if I make it again, I’ll likely use less. Plus, I might find some type of green veggie to jazz it up a bit.
Here’s what you’ll need:
2-3 Salmon filets
4 Tbsp Butter, softened
¼ Cup Parsley, chopped
2 Cloves Garlic, grated
1 Lb. Short Pasta of Choice, preferably bronze die extruded
2 Green Onions, chopped
1 Cup Crème Fraiche
1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
Salt and Pepper
Start a pot of water to boil. Place the salmon, skin side down, on a baking sheet. Mix together 3 tablespoons of the softened butter, the parsley, garlic and some salt and pepper. Spread the mixture over the salmon and bake for 12 minutes in a 400 degree oven.
Cook pasta until al-dente, then reserve a cup of the pasta water before draining the pasta. Do not rinse the pasta. You need the sauce to stick to it (which is only possible at all with a bronze die extruded pasta, and impossible with typical Teflon extruded pastas) and you need the pasta to stay hot.
Using the same pot you used to boil the pasta, and with the pot on the same burner, but with the heat turned off, add the remaining tablespoon of butter, the crème fraiche, green onions, lemon juice and salt and pepper, stirring until everything is smooth. Then add the pasta and mix together.
Remove the salmon from the skins and break up in the pot, mixing together while adding pasta water until the sauce is smoothed out again.
Serve with a little Romano cheese on top, and with a caprese salad on the side.
This is pretty good, but like I said, if I make this again I’ll need to mess with it a bit more to make the salmon less overpowering and add in something else to make the flavor a little more complex.
What if it’s homemade orecchiette rolled out on a kitchen table by a nonna and then formed by hand, one by one? And if that’s OK, can you find me a source?
Well, that’s the whole point, right? Hand made>bronze die extruded>teflon die extruded. Either way, the pasta should not be rinsed.
Plus, if I knew of a source, do you think I would share it? Hells no. I don’t want nonna getting overwhelmed with orders from other people when she should be solely dedicated to my culinary pleasure.
Maybe Luigi has a source, although I bet he wouldn’t share either.
What we really need is for @luigi-vuoto to do an FYCE post on homemade pasta.
Mmm- printed and added to shopping list!
This is very late, but have you ever noticed how many recipes involving seafood filets tell you to put them skin-side down? I mean, of course you would. The skin helps them not char, and if the filets were skin-side up there’s be a covering and they might be a little raw when you thought they would have been done.
Anyway, this sounds absolutely perfect to me. I once did something like this like 25 or 30 years ago but with swordfish. I’m not sure you can even buy swordfish anymore but at one point you could and I wanted to show off to one of BH’s mouthy, bitchy friends. I should have seasoned his portion with arsenic, flavorless and difficult to detect in the corpse post-mortem, but I am a good Christian. Plus I kind of want to keep him alive because he was one of the first men in New York to be diagnosed with what we now call AIDS. It’s not really clear why or how he’s still alive, but he’s been the subject of numerous studies and his blood and DNA has been shipped all over the world.
Crunchy fish skin is amazing, and I’m not being sarcastic.