From the Christmas eve dinner party, pasta and traditions

As i told you in the previous post, this year i was ready to prepare the Christmas dinner in a very traditional way, cooking just fish but also trying to present to my guests a dish that could be a bit original. I thought could have been nice to put together products from Italy and UK, so i choose to use the Wild Smoked Scottish Salmon from Forman & Son.

This is in fact a 100 year old family business supplying smoked salmon, caviar and other smoked and fresh fish to the world's leading hotels and finest restaurants in UK and from 2002 is also online on Forman & Field, fine food mail order company specializing in fresh, traditional British produce from small, independent producers. 

This was just a part of my special treat for my guest on Christmas. They still didn't know Pastificio dei Campi, the pasta that was going to be used to create the main protagonist of the Christmas eve dinner: Spaghetti with Wild Smoked Salmon and cream of courgettes.

Here the ingredients for 6 people:

600 gr Spaghetti Pastificio Dei Campi

200 gr of Smoked salmon

4 courgettes of a medium size

1 fennel

4 spoons of  pine nuts

4 spoons of Mascarpone or single cream

some garlic cloves,

salt, pepper, some fennel seeds

a glass of white wine

Cut the courgettes and the fennel in little cubes, then place them in a pan with some olive oil and chopped garlic cloves. Let it cook for around 10 minutes adding some salt and pepper and then pour the glass of white wine. When evaporated, turn a bit down the fire and cover the pan.

Now in a big sauce pan prepare the water for the pasta, add some salt and when it starts to boil, add the spaghetti. Let them cook and in the meantime blend the vegetable with the pine nuts until creamy. Now put everything again in the pan you used before with also the mascarpone or single cream and the smoked salmon in strips.

When the pasta it's "al dente" drain it and toss it in the pan with the salmon and the cream. I added here some whole pine nuts too and I serve it hot with a sprinkle of fennel seeds. If too dry, you can even add a bit of olive oil but not Parmesan. We don't normally use it with the fish and you could risk to cover some flavors.

This dish it's perfect for Christmas, but it's also a quick and easy recipe to cook any day of the week, being a very complete main course. I hope you will try it!