Time: 10 minutes – Patience: 10 minutes – Difficulty: Simple – Knackyness: Low

Yesterday, I had a first experiment at curing and smoking salmon at home.  Tonight, I made a creamy smoked salmon pasta with the cold smoked fillet I’d produced.

Ingredients –

• One tail fillet of home-smoked salmon, around 100g
• Two home-reared pullet’s eggs
• One clove of home-smoked garlic, crushed
• A small handful of grated parmesan or pecorino
• A glug of double cream
• Pasta of your choice, sufficient for two portions

Method –

• In a dry frying pan, start to cook your whole smoked salmon fillet
• In a large saucepan, bring some salted water to the boil
• Add the pasta to the boiling water, along with a pinch of salt and a glug of olive oil
• Once the salmon fillet is cooked, break it up into flakes in the pan, then add the crushed garlic clove and continue to fry gently for a couple more minutes
• Meanwhile, in a bowl or jug, beat the eggs with a fork, add the glug of double cream and 2/3rds of the grated parmesan, along with a generous pinch of cracked black pepper
• Once the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the saucepan.
• Add the liquid ingredients to the frying pan with the salmon and garlic, and almost immediately transfer all of these into the drained pasta
• Mix swiftly, the heat from the pasta will cook the egg, and the texture should end up thick and glossy.  But don’t worry if it looks a bit like scrambled egg with salmon in it, it will still taste marvellous
• Serve into two bowls, topped with the rest of the grated parmesan

Simple, tasty, and all the key ingredients home-produced. And done in the ten minutes it takes to cook the pasta. What could be better?

Verdict on the smoked salmon? Undoubted success. Cooked in this dish it is distinctively and recognisably smoked salmon, has a good firm texture and slightly salty flavour and lovely smokey aroma.  Result!

I have an apology to make, however – it was a long day at work, and I was hungry… so I didn’t stop to take photos of the cooked dish, I just ate it!