Italian Salmon

As promised, here's my second scottish salmon dish.  After the first time I had it, I decided to have it again the next week.  No wonder why the lady in the store has it every week!  Now I understand.

I had a groupon to my specialty store and so the first thing I grabbed was the salmon.  I had no idea how I was going to prepare it but as luck would have it, I grabbed a bag of fresh basil thinking I'd have some in a salad.  That thought quickly disappeared when my plans changed one night and I decided to have the salmon instead of the salad.  I grabbed the bunch of basil, some olive oil out of the pantry, a 1/4 bag of pine nuts from the freezer, a couple cloves of garlic from the fridge along with the wedge of parmigiano reggiano.  I stuffed the basil, pine nuts, peeled garlic cloves and about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the food processor and ran it until it was nicely mixed.  I added a pinch of salt, a few cranks on the pepper mill and scrubbed my wedge of cheese until it was lightly snow covered.  Pulsed it a few more times and set that pesto aside to relax a bit.

I started some boiling, salted water and got out the pan with some olive oil heating just as before.  This time I used truffled salt and pepper on the salmon and angel hair pasta.  I put the fish on first (meat (not skin) side down) while the water was coming to a boil and started dicing up some onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, arugula and sun dried tomatoes.

When the water was boiling, I dropped the pasta in and flipped the fish.  When the pasta was ready, so was the fish.  Again, you want a nice bounce back on the fish when poked with your finger.  I set the fish aside and put the veggies into the pan that the fish came out of.  A few quick tosses and then I added the pasta and a tablespoon of the pesto.  Keep tossing and stirring to get the pesto incorporated.  I found I had to add a few tablespoons of the pasta water to loosen it a up a bit.  I then added another tablespoon of the pesto.  Pesto is pretty strong so add it a little at a time until it's just coating the pasta and veggies.  A few more stirs and it was ready.  I served the pasta on the dish that I set the fish on and topped with another dash of the cheese.  There was my second scottish salmon dish.  Just talking about it makes me want to go get more.  Not sure what I'll do with it next.