Spaghetti with marlin, tuna and shrimp. Smoked recipe

We come back with a pasta recipe, in this case a recipe with a lifelong base and garnished with a delicious sauce, it is a dish of  pasta with sea flavor that rabea  with a different touch from smoked. It is a very easy recipe that returns to those simple dishes on which the blog is based. A practical dish for cooking on the weekend or daily, you add a little good pasta al dente to some good ingredients from the Murcia region, and you get a luxury dish. In this case I have taken advantage of a few prawns that you have in the freezer and some incredible smoked meats with all the flavor of the Murcian sea . The secret is in the point that smokers give us, in this case one well known, tuna and another less known in this area, marlin . The result is an impressive taste of the sea that combines great with a little chopped coriander.

The white marlin is a fish much like swordfish, taste that wins the smoke it is a similar taste of ham, yes, a ham with a sea leave. Incredible but true, I put it for a dinner with friends in Ourense and it triumphed, an entire loin that disappeared in the blink of an eye. For this dish you can use those smoked foods that you like the most, but try a different one from time to time, salmon, trout and cod are the easiest to find in all supermarkets.

Salted and smoked fish are very important in the Mediterranean diet, unknown to me until a few years ago. I discovered its flavor on a vacation in Denia and began to use it in my kitchen, from the typical tomato toast with a slice of finely tuna mojama to a risotto that I will show you next week. I leave you with a 100% seafood dish, what do you enjoy!

Preparation of the smoked and prawn sauce

1. We add extra virgin olive oil to the casserole and introduce some garlic cloves to sauté until they are almost confit over low heat for 5 minutes. In this way we will be able to give the extra virgin olive oil a touch of garlic, and we will avoid repeating it after the meal. We remove the garlic cloves and with a simple fork squeeze, a tender garlic will come out (almost mashed) that we will add later.
2. We cut the leek into finite rings, I love that it shows on the plate but you can chop it very often and it will also give it flavor and it will not be noticed at the end of its cooking.
3. We open the whole tomato can and drain its contents, once you think that they no longer have any water, we squeeze the tomatoes by hand, until there are small pieces and drain again. We reserve.
4. First add the leek to the oil pan and season with salt and pepper, increase the temperature and stir gently, after a minute of this process add a pinch of baking soda (1 or 2 g. Is more than enough, a point of a knife is a good measure), this will help us to poach it in a very short time.  “Many of you will have made candied onion and you will know the time it takes to get a really powerful caramelized sauce. A real pain in the neck when your days are numbered: I present you an infallible trick that will allow you to poach onions in 5 minutes and confit them in about 20. In addition, the flavor is enhanced with even sweeter and caramelized notes. The technique is to speed up the process by reducing the acidity of the onion with an alkaline product: baking soda. ”
5. After these 5 minutes we add the drained tomato and mix the flavors of these ingredients for another 2 minutes.
6. We thawed the prawns in the fridge the night before (in my case I had about 8 that I had left over from another recipe, but you can use prawns, prawns, even the fish you like the most, imagination to power). We peel them, remove the head and the shell that protects them.
7. We put a wide saucepan to cook pasta with very hot water and two bay leaves and add heads and shell of the prawns to cook over medium heat for ten minutes. We strain this seafood water that we have improvised and return it to the saucepan where we will cook the pasta. We reserve.
8. Once we have the peeled prawns we remove the intestine (the black thread that has in the center) and add them to the casserole with the leek, garlic, medium confit and tomato. We spend the prawns only about 2 minutes without sautéing excessively, just enough for them to turn pink. We chop about 100 g. smoked, in this case I chose marlin and tuna, and we added them. We remove everything, no more than 1 minute.
9. We try salt and if necessary season with salt and pepper, stir everything with a wooden spoon, mix all the flavors well and remove from the heat.

Once we have the sauce we start with the pasta.

Preparation of spaghetti

I present you some easy steps so that the pasta is perfect for you. It is not that it is especially difficult but everything has its little tricks, ” simple … ma non troppo”  that the Italians would say (Easy, but not entirely).

1. The first step is to have the sauce of ingredients already prepared before the pasta touches the water. The sauce should always wait for spaghetti and not the other way around.
2. We heat in a saucepan a liter of water (in this case with the shrimp broth that we have reserved) for every 100 g. pasta is the recommended measure per person, except if we are passionate about spaghetti at home. These proportions, which are normally indicated on the packaging, help the paste not stick together. And always try to use a large casserole, the largest in your kitchen. If you cook pasta many times it will be very useful to buy a casserole for those occasions, a good investment.
3. When it begins to boil in spurts we add 1 generous handful of salt, about 2 level tablespoons for every 500 grams of pasta. Then we add the pasta, always all together. Stir with a wooden spoon so that the spaghetti does not stick and are loose.
4. On the back of the package of pasta comes the cooking time, we must be guided by these instructions because for each type it is different, in this case it is 9 minutes. So we will get what is called pasta “al dente” or at its right point, that is, that it does not go over, although a great tip is to try it almost at the end, just in case in the packaging they deceive us :). Once the time has elapsed, drain the pasta immediately and combine it with the sauce.

Presentation of the dish

1. Add the freshly made spaghetti to the sauce and mix everything with a spoon so that the flavors are well combined.
2. Optionally we decorate each dish with a little chopped parsley or coriander and serve them warm.

It is certainly a simple and quick dish to make, but delicious. Do not stop trying it and you will tell me …

Be sure to enjoy all the recipes for fish and seafood that we have on the blog, I assure you that you will find a lot of ideas to make yours much happier.

Tips and recommendations

How to peel and clean prawns, prawns or prawns before a recipe?

• We start with the head that is the most flavorful, making a simple rotation we easily detach it, we reserve it to cook and get a good seafood fumet or broth that in this case we will use to cook the pasta. Then, from the bottom of the belly, where the legs are, we remove with our hands the different rings or shell that cover the body along with the legs. Do not throw away the shells because they will also be used to make a rich fumet or fish broth. We can remove the glue or leave it depending on whether we need it to decorate a plate or not. To remove it, pull the tail with one hand while pressing the body of the prawn or shrimp a little with the other (it is always the last part you should remove).
• Once the prawns or shrimp are peeled we must remove the intestine (a black thread that they have inside) that we will remove helping us with a toothpick, with the tip of a knife or, when you have experience, directly with your fingers. With the toothpick we prick the end of the intestine that is visible and pull it. It should come out whole, like a thread, without opening the shrimp. It is thrown because it tastes bitter and can bring sand or the last thing the prawn ate. We dry and reserve the prawns for any recipe we have in mind. We can freeze them or prepare shrimp as an ingredient in this great sauce.

Recommended wine

This Christmas I have tasted a great wine from the harvest of my cousin Paco, a vinazo that has pleasantly surprised me, the section of different white grapes, from Jerez to Godello that gives it impressive flavor. The bad news is that it does not sell, it only gives a bottle to friends and family, a limited production of 300 bottles. As my cousin says:  “A wine made with great care to have at home, to offer to visitors and friends, there is nothing better than sharing any talk with a glass of vineyard, if it is from yourself much better”

• Selection white 2013 Paco (Zona da Ribeira Sacra) –  Bodega da Forraqueira (Nogueira de Ramuín): A powerful wine, with 12º C, straw yellow with greenish reflections, very expressive on the nose with an excellent and pronounced aroma reminiscent of flowers and dried fruit as well as citric features that give it a slightly dry but very pleasant final taste in the mouth, a wide attack, clean and very fresh. It reminds me a lot of a white wine from Valdeorras, “Sileno Blanco”. Important to take it at about 9º C, I love it very cold. Excellent to accompany seafood and fish (like some grilled prawns that we had in Nadal in my father’s cellar), white meats, these spaghetti or a good cheese from Arzúa-Ulloa.

On the label that Paco has put on the wine we can read:

“In the vineyards of La Forraqueira following the tradition of the López family, this delicious wine is procured for the most exquisite palates. Carefully crafted, this broth has been bottled to the delight of family friends, reminding them, for the sake of their health, that he who drinks wine, lives less … less sad, less tense, less depressed, less stressed, less quarreled with life… 2013 harvest ”