I’m game to try any recipe that includes pasta in the ingredients. Cooking French recipes though is a new cooking arena for me. My cousin Sara inspired me to broaden my cooking skills by gifting me a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine for Christmas. So I thought to myself, how hard could it be?
I researched several French pasta recipes and found they use pasta quite a bit, in fact, much more than I thought in French meals. One that I wanted to try but ran out of time is Pissaladiere Pasta. It has an Italian spin with the ingredients so you can understand why I was attracted to that recipe.
I chose this recipe with anchovy cream sauce because I had the ingredients on hand, and it literally has only five main ingredients. I would rate this recipe in the “easy” category. The only caveat is that you probably should like anchovy flavor because the cream sauce creates a rich salty anchovy taste.
The combination of these ingredients did pique my interest as I would never have thought to put a raw egg yolk on top of pasta with a cream sauce and nuts. But it worked and created a wonderful diversity of flavors in one bite. So I give the French a Kudo for this recipe!
Main ingredients plus a little freshly ground black pepper make up the entire recipe.
Anchovy cream sauce. Yum, a nutty, salty, tangy flavor.
Fettucine coated with the sauce and topped with hazelnuts.
Try as I might (“take three” pictured here) I could not get the egg yolk to stay together when I topped this pasta dish. I think the sharp hazelnut pieces pierced the yolk when I set it on top and caused it to break all over the pasta. That’s okay, I was just hoping to create the perfect picture for the blog.
And yes, I was a bit hesitant to eat a raw egg yolk over this delicious pasta with anchovy cream sauce. And then I remembered the “old” days when we would put raw eggs into some kind of “hangover cure” drink. So I worked up the courage to try the pasta after I had distributed the egg around a bit. Actually, I was quite surprised how good it tasted. This recipe reminds me of a carbonara-type pasta dish.
French - Pasta With Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 2 ounce can anchovies, drained
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 6 ounces fettucinie
- 2 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts chopped lightly
- Fresh ground black pepper
Instructions
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Combine the anchovies with cream in a saucepan and cook over medium heat. Crack fresh pepper into the anchovy/cream mixture. Break up the anchovies with a folk until they melt into the sauce.
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Drop the pasta into a pot of heavily salted boiling water. Cook according to package directions or al dente.
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Drain the pasta, return back to the pot and pour the sauce over, stirring to combine.
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Plate the pasta into two dishes, sprinkle with hazelnuts and place an egg yolk on top of each bowl. Serve immediately.
Recipe Notes
Cooking for two