Salmon and Cream Sauce for Pasta

 This is, obviously, not a vegetarian dish, it is not terribly seasonal, in fact it is lovely as a warming dinner on a coolish day, it isn’t even terribly Italian as there are no salmon in Italian rivers, but it is a great option if you are pressed for time.

Put on the pasta water and while you are doing this, start preparing the sauce and a salad. By the time the pasta are done, the meal will be ready. Any form of pasta will do for this but I prefer tagliatelle, homemade if I have the time…

What you need

• 1 medium onion or spring onion, finely chopped
• 150 -200 g smoked salmon cut into strips or squares, edges finely chopped (see picture)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Butter or oil for frying
• 1- 2 teaspoons of instant fish fond (or vegetable broth)
• 50 ml good white wine
• 300 ml cream
• saffron (2 sachets or a generous pinch saffron strands)
• salt and pepper, possibly a touch of Cajun spice (recipe will follow)
• optionally some fresh herbs

What you do

1. Melt a nob of butter (or the same amount of oil) in a frying pan.
2. Add the chopped onions and the chopped salmon (for flavour, the strips/squares will be added later) and sauté briefly until the onions are soft and slightly golden.
3. Add the instant fish or vegetable fond and then the wine and reduce.
4. Using a garlic press, squeeze in the garlic. One can do this at the last minute too if the flavour of garlic is to be stronger.
5. Pour in the cream and allow to bubble vigorously, reducing the sauce and thickening it at the same time.
6. Sprinkle in the saffron and stir to ensure an even colouring.
7. Season with salt (usually not necessary), pepper and, if you fancy it, Cajun spice.
8. Before serving, add the salmon strips/squares but make sure they are only warmed up, not boiled.

A remark about thickening sauces

I am aware that flour can be used to thicken sauces as well as starch from potatoes, maize or arrow root. The trouble with most thickening agents is that they don’t really improve the flavour of a sauce at best and, at worst, make it a bit gluey. If one uses flour, mixed with a bit of butter, one should take great care not to let it boil for longer than about a minute and use it sparingly to avoid imparting the taste to the sauce - or let it boil for one to two hours as this ensures a full and harmonious blending of the flour into the sauce. I once did a sauce béchamel like this and the result was wonderful, a far cry from the usual wallpaper paste one often gets. However, who has that amount of time.

My point is that cream added at the end of the cooking process, bit by bit while the sauce bubbles vigorously, results in a nicely creamy sauce without the flour flavour. In addition you can very easily check how liquid or how thick the sauce is going to be.

Clearly, this trick only works for sauces with cream (whole cream, it needn’t be double cream). For other sauces, there are other ways of avoiding the flour problem, but more of that later.