wednesday night suppers ought to be simple, quick to put together and shouldn’t require intensive grocery shopping. o had been through a gruelling six hour assessment centre and i wanted to cook a nice mid-week dinner…in my fridge i had a tub of yeo valley crème fraiche with a looming best before date. i also had some lemons and garlic and pasta in the pantry cupboard and on my windowsill are pots of herbs. there had to be a way to make a tasty supper out of this. it didn’t take me long to realize that salmon was the answer. o loves salmon! so off i went to the grocer after work and bought some oak smoked salmon trimmings and some peaches to bake for dessert. it took me roughly twenty minutes to put this whole thing together.
first, i put generously salted water to boil for the pasta. then i peeled some and chopped some plump cloves of garlic, took out the trimmings from their packing, washing a big handful of dill and chopped it up roughly and grated the zest of the lemon.
i started making the pasta sauce shortly before putting in the pasta to boil. first, i heated a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to which i added the chopped garlic and the lemon zest. i fried this slightly until it released its aroma and the garlic was lightly coloured. after this i added the tub of crème fraiche and heated it gently. it is at this point that i put the pasta on to boil. i used fusilli but penne or linguine would be good too.
back to the sauce, i added the smoked salmon trimmings and warmed them through. be careful with the heat here. it should be as low as possible otherwise the crème fraiche will curdle and that won’t be fun. the roughly chopped dill should be the last to go in. once your pasta is cooked, drain and add to the sauce. stir it gently to coat evenly and then tuck in. oh, and a dash of coarsely ground black pepper. it does marvels!
