When a friend of mine asked me for a couple of recipes she could use, I did not doubt my choices at all. As I love to cook and consider myself a foodie I am honoured to share my love for food with the world.

One of the first recipes that came to mind was my kick ass pasta with grilled salmon. But hey, it needed a fancy name so I went Italian. Sorry for the strange style of writing for this, but my chaotic head is not allowing otherwise at the moment. You’ll just have to excuse the lack of photos for this one. I have none at hand…

Dear friend (you know who you are), this one is for you! “Buon appetito!”

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Linguine is a type of pasta, which is flatter and wider than Spaghetti but not as wide Tagliatelle.  Mostly served with seafood. (Italians use each type of pasta for different dishes.) Or just simply with some pesto… I went with the seafood option… Linguine with salmon.

Linguine con Salmone alla griglia

So for this recipe I’ll assume you’ll be making your own linguine as well. *insert foodie nerd factor*

The linguine;

I always make bigger portions, use what I need and freeze the rest. Fresh homemade pasta is easy to freeze and defrost. As long as you have a good airtight container.

For approx 6 portions;

7 eggs (I usually use medium sized eggs, organic)
approx 9 oz of 00 flour (which is the finest ground flour you can get)
approx 9 oz of fine semolina

I use a stand mixer and pasta machine to make my pasta.

• Crack the eggs in a clean bowl and lightly beat them. Just so the yolks and whites mix.
• Poor the flour and semolina in a clean mixing bowl and switch on the mixer. Make sure that the flour and semolina are mixed before adding in the eggs. Let the mixer knead the dough till it’s smooth and elastic. (If you were to do this by hand, mix the flour & semolina in a bowl, create a ‘hole’ in the middle of the mountain of flour and pour the eggs in. knead it as if you were kneading bread until it’s a smooth elastic substance.) Wrap it up in cling film and leave it to rest for about an hour (half an hour at the least) in the fridge.
• Once the dough has rested take it out of the fridge. Flour your work surface and pasta machine. Slightly flatten the dough it before feeding it through the pasta machine. Start out with the thickest setting and go to the thinner settings each time you feed the dough through (flour the machine every time before feeding the pasta through). When it gets too long to handle, cut the sheet in two and start feeding them through separately. It takes a while to figure out the right thickness. I usually feed it through around 6 times. It should be thin, but no too thin. It will tear when it’s too thin.
• Once the sheets are the right thickness trim the edges and put the linguine cutter on the pasta machine. Dust the machine with flour again and feed the sheets through, the dough will roll out as linguine. Lay it flat on a plate and dust it with some more flour (oh yes, lots of dusting going on here…). Leave the pasta in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.

The Sauce;

Approx 7 fl oz of Cream (full fat, it tastes the best!)
1 squeezed lemon or lime (I prefer lime, the taste is more refreshing)
Finely chopped basil to taste (I usually use around half an OZ)
1 glass of white wine.
1 clove of garlic (or more if you are a garlic lover like I am)
approx 1 tbl spoon of olive oil
Salt to taste
Peper to taste

• Put the oil in a small pot. Crush the garlic and add it in once the oil is hot.
• Once you start to smell the garlic (BEFORE it turns brown) add the wine, the cream, the lemon/lime juice and the basil. Bring it to the boil.
• Once it’s boiling turn down the gas and let it simmer. The sauce should thicken just a little but not to much. The simmering is mostly for the flavours to infuse.
• Taste once in a while and add salt and/or pepper if needed.

The Salmon;

I prefer to use salmon fillets for this. You can either use it as a whole and grill it or dice it and add it to the sauce just before serving after frying it. I prefer the first option; you’ll need fresh fillets for this. Dice and fry it when you use frozen salmon.

1 fillet per person when grilling (2 fillets for 3 adults when dicing).
Some olive oil
A grill pan/griddle

• Oil the griddle by rubbing olive oil in with a paper towel or a brush.
• Once griddle is HOT (test this by splashing a few drops of water on it, if it sizzles, it’s HOT) you can lay the salmon on it. Always on the skin side (if the skin is taken off put it on the flat side).
• It depends on how you want the salmon cooked. If it’s fresh I’d always go for pink. You’ll notice the salmon change colour from orange-pink to salmon-pink and you’ll see it get ‘dry’. You should flip it when it starts to look dry, to grill the other side. It’ll only need a couple of minutes on each side. If it gets to dry it’ll fall apart.

At the same time boil the pasta;

• Put the linguine in a sieve and lower the sieve in a pot of boiling water (with salt and some olive oil in it) use a lot of water for a little pasta to prevent it from sticking and not cooking properly. Because the pasta is fresh it will only need 2 to 3 minutes before it’s done. I prefer ‘al dente’, it will still have bite to it.
• Once the pasta is cooked lift the sieve out of the pot and drain the water from both the pasta/sieve and the pot.
• Mix the sauce in with the pasta.

Serve on a plate and lay the salmon on top.

You can decorate the plate with some fresh basil and although I don’t like cheese over my pasta when it is served with fish, you can put some grated (fresh of course) Parmesan on the table for people to add. (It actually is weird and not done to eat cheese & seafood in my world, that’s why I always just put out on the table for others to grab.)

I usually serve this with a simple green salad with Rucola (I think you call it rocket or arugula in the US it has a nutty flavour), red tip leaf salad (for colour), pine nuts, olive oil and some balsamic vinegar.

(And The Man always urges me to serve it with bread, so he can use it to soak up the left over sauce from plates and pots…)

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If you have come this far, please let me know if you enjoyed your meal

*SoWritten