Stephencooks

Here in Maine we're lucky to have Ducktrap River up the road. When the Ducktrappers apply their smoke, salt and herb magic to various varieties of fish and shellfish the result is a flavorful luxury. 

The reason I say we're lucky to have them up the road -- their distribution is a lot wider than just the local area -- is that they routinely sell one-pound pouches of salmon trim (the odd-shaped pieces left on the cutting table after they've prepared the perfect slices that characterize their other smoked salmon products) to the area markets, who sell them to me for $6.99 a pound, which is a fraction of the cost of the perfectly-sliced version. (I've written about this before and readers have reported that they can't find this product outside of Maine. It's also not available in the Ducktrap on-line store.)

A pound of smoked salmon is nice to have in the kitchen, especially when the cost and cut of it encourage you to go beyond the beautiful delicately-folded-slice-on-a-cracker routine. After my success with the Smoked Fish Risotto a few weeks ago I decided to try an absorption pasta with the salmon to see how that worked out. (Absorption pasta is a cousin of risotto, in that instead of boiling the pasta in salted water and then mixing it with the sauce, the pasta is cooked slowly in a smaller amount of flavored broth, which allows the pasta to more fully absorb and incorporate the flavors in the broth. Click HERE for another absorption pasta post if you're interested.)

For this preparation I used Rustichella D'Abruzzo pasta in the Cannolicchi shape but any short pasta works well for absorption pasta (since there's a lot of stirring involved I'd avoid the longer spaghetti and fettucine, since they are more likely to break). The result was a creamy, flavorful dish, with plenty of smoked salmon taste but everything (lemon, capers, cheese, red peppers) in delightful balance. As you might expect, a fresh salad of spring greens, a crusty baguette and a bottle of pinot grigio rounded out the meal.