Smoked Salmon Pasta with Yogurt or Chèvre Alfredo
This pasta is a variation on a more traditional cream sauce, but uses either goat’s yogurt or chèvre for lower lactose. Buy the best smoked fish you can find; use cow’s-milk yogurt (or Greek) (or ricotta!) if you can’t find goat’s-milk and don’t mind the lactose; and don’t stress about what vegetables (if any) you include in the finished product.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 3 servings 1x
Ingredients
- 2 T olive oil
- Zest of 1 lemon, peeled and cut into thin strips
- 1 clove garlic, sliced or minced
- 1/2 t crushed red pepper flakes
- 1/4 t fennel seeds
- 12 oz. (2 individual-sized containers) goat yogurt OR 6 oz. chèvre
- Juice of the above lemon (just half, if using the chèvre variation)
- 9 oz. pasta
- 3/4 lb. smoked salmon
- 1 C frozen peas
Instructions
- Take your fish out of the fridge to come to room temperature.
- Put the olive oil in a small sauté pan, along with the lemon zest, garlic, and all of the dried spices. Sauté this on your lowest setting for 10-15 minutes, taking care to pull it off the heat (and out of the pan) as soon as the garlic begins to so much as brown. When it’s all cooked, put it in the bowl you’re going to serve the pasta in.
- Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, and cook your pasta.
- Stir the yogurt/chèvre and lemon juice into the oil/spice mix. If using chèvre, save some of the pasta cooking water before draining, and mix it in here until the sauce reaches a creamy consistency.
- Drain the pasta, and stir it into the yogurt sauce.
- Put a touch more olive oil in the pan you used to sauté the spices, and dump in the peas. Get them nice and warm, and then toss them in with your pasta.
- Flake the smoked salmon into the bowl. Stir it all up.
Yum.
Notes
I used 9 oz. of pasta and 3/4 lb. of smoked salmon because that felt about right for 3 hungry people, and this amount of sauce coated all of that nicely. Both the pasta and fish quantities are very adjustable, of course — I’d just say that if you adjust both of them up substantially, you consider making more sauce to go with. But it’s not a strict proportion.
When I made this recently, I added 1 bulb of roasted fennel, and thought it added great flavor. I’d do 2 in the future, but this is strictly optional.