Pasta with Salmon in Tomato Cream Sauce
Not so long ago, more as a matter of fashion than of reason, the term Mediterranean cuisine became firmly established. For some reason, it usually means the cuisine of Italy rather than that of the whole Mediterranean region. What all Mediterranean cuisines share is an abundance and variety of fresh vegetables, meat, poultry and fish. And of course rice and pasta.
Some time ago, for particular reasons, the word pasta was used very rarely. People more often said macaroni or spaghetti, or used local terms describing the shape of the dough product: shells, horns and so on. Few people suspected that there are a great many pasta shapes, not to mention the different names for the same pasta in different sizes.
But pasta is just pieces of dough: plain unleavened dough made from top-quality flour and special varieties of grain. Pasta dough is also often made with natural colorings such as beet, carrot, spinach, cuttlefish ink or egg yolk. There are special tricolore pastas, and pasta with fish turns out wonderfully tasty too. Filled pasta is not rare either, but that is a different kind of pasta.
What gives pasta its flavor is the sauce. Alongside the well-known traditional pasta sauces, such as Bolognese, amatriciana and classic pesto, every cook, or anyone who can cook, has their own secrets even for famous sauces, which make their version differ from the classic. They add a touch, often barely noticeable, but always wonderful. And people almost always add: the secret of my sauce is that I cook it not for 3 hours but for 3.5, and add one secret herb that I won’t tell you about. But then, at the end, they will surely write down a detailed recipe for you.
Pasta with salmon, cooked with tomato and cream and with olives added, is more a home recipe than an Italian one, but it contains all the ingredients typical of Mediterranean cuisine. Pasta with salmon is quick to make. While the pasta boils, the sauce is ready, and you even have time to make a salmon salad as an appetizer.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Pasta (penne, fusilli, farfalle) 250 g
- Water for cooking the pasta 2.5–3 l
- Salt for the pasta water 7 g per 1 l of water
- Salmon (steak) 1 steak
- Tomato pulp 200 g
- Cream 50 ml
- Olives 8-10
- Olive oil 2 tbsp
- Garlic 1-2 cloves
- Salt, ground black pepper, sugar, nutmeg, dried Mediterranean herbs to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Scale the salmon and cut it into steaks. You need only one steak for this dish, which is enough; the rest can simply be frozen. Carefully cut off all the red flesh, thoroughly removing the bones. Cut the fish into large pieces; pasta with salmon is better with large chunks of fish.
Heat the best olive oil in a frying pan and quickly fry peeled, crushed garlic cloves in it. The garlic flavors the oil a little. As soon as the garlic begins to darken, discard it.
Add the salmon pieces to the hot olive oil and fry the fish for 1-2 minutes.
As soon as the pieces of fish turn lighter, add the tomato pulp.
In season, of course, it is better to use the pulp of fresh tomatoes, peeled and seeded. Out of season, canned tomato pulp works very well. It is usually sold in 400 g cans. For two servings of pasta with salmon, half a can of canned tomato pulp is enough.
Season the salmon and tomato with salt and pepper, and add a scant teaspoon of sugar (4 g) to make the sauce sweet and sour. Add freshly grated nutmeg on the tip of a knife. Pour in the cream, preferably a rich, natural one.
Add black olives, pitted or not. This is optional, really. The olives can be used whole or sliced. After adding the olives, simmer the salmon sauce under a lid for 5 minutes, then remove the lid and let the excess liquid evaporate. The sauce should be thick enough to stay on the pasta; otherwise you get not pasta with salmon but a tomato soup with fish and pasta.
In a large pot, bring 2.5-3 l of water to a boil, add salt at 7 g per liter of water, and add 0.5 tsp of a dried mix of herbs typical of Mediterranean cuisine: basil, oregano, savory and so on. Cook the pasta until done, following the time on the package. You need short, shaped pasta: penne, fusilli, farfalle and the like.
Drain the cooked pasta in a colander so the water runs off. Add the pasta to the sauce and mix everything. Cover the pan with a lid and let the pasta with salmon stand for 2-3 minutes, off the heat.
Put the pasta on plates and serve while the pasta with salmon is hot.
In my opinion, there’s no need to sprinkle it with herbs or Parmesan. Pasta with salmon is a self-sufficient dish with a delicate flavor.
Calories and macros
840 kcal
Serving ≈ 480 g
- Protein34 g17% of kcal
- Fat33 g37% of kcal
- Carbs93 g46% of kcal
100 g175 kcalProtein 7.1 gFat 6.9 gCarbs 19.3 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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