Smoked eel tagliatelle
( Tagliatelle con anguilla affumicata )

Smoked eel tagliatelle recipe

Preparation and cooking

• - Prepare zucchini.
  Trim their ends, wash very well and quarter lengthways.
  Remove all their seeds and cut them into sticks.
  Put them into a non-stick frying pan together with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil and bay leaf.
  Fry all slightly over a low heat, stirring often.
  Once colored, add half a glass hot water and continue cooking until all cooking juice is well reduced.
  Add other water only if necessary.
  Season to taste with salt when you turn off the stove.
  Remove bay leaf.
• - Meanwhile ....
  ... boil quail eggs, 4 minutes.
  Put under cold running water to cool them quickly.
  Then shell, halve and put them apart.
  Cut smoked eel into pieces.
• - Cook tagliatelle in abundant salt water until al dente stage.
  Just before draining tagliatelle, take away a ladle of boiling water and transfer it to your zucchini sauce.

Just before serving

• - Drain pasta very well and transfer it together with aromatic herbs and smoked eel pieces (let some of them apart to garnish, if you want) into the pan with zucchini sauce.
  Let all ingredients flavor well over a high heat, a minute, stirring slowly and continuously.
  Turn off the stove, add halved quail eggs and remaining olive oil.
  Stir and serve at once.

Note

Tips

• - Generally, I have the habit to freeze fresh chives and parsley in summer. So I have them available in winter. You have only to wash them, pat dry with kitchen paper and cut into freezer bag. You can keep them in the freezer for some months.
• - In Italy Comacchio (close to the Po delta and Ferrara) is the area when eels are bred and then smoked according to an old technique. The first recipes with smoked eel appeared in the period of the domination of House of Este in Ferrara (from the thirteenth century AD) but smoked eel was food for rich people. In fact most people living in this region were too poor for buying firewood necessary to smoke this kind of fish and so the habit of smoking eels disappeared quickly in the next centuries.
  This habit re-appeared during German occupation in the Second World War but the most production and spread of smoked eel belongs to few years ago.

Menu planning

• - Be careful to combine other dishes to smoked eel tagliatelle. Take a look at a menu of mine for Holiday Season. Link below!

Useful links for this recipe

• - Follow the link to this fish-only dinner menu of mine. It is composed by a starter, eel tagliatelle, a second course made with sturgeon and a lot of fruits and sweets. Lately, in Italy we prefer to limit the number of courses and possibly enrich our full menu with appetizers or sweets at the end. In this case, fresh and candied fruit salad served directly in the pineapple and then dried fruit, candied peel, chocolates and various Christmas sweets to close the meal. In the true spirit of Italian Christmas.
• - Other recipes with smoked eels? take a look at eel risotto. It tastes fantastic and you can read another full menu idea according to the Italian tradition.

Healthy eating

• - Fiber per serving: 1.6 grams (daily intake is 30 grams per head).
• - As you have read, this dish is rich in calories, total fats ... I suggest to make it rarely, for your special events also because smoked food is not healthy.

Loretta

What's the right wine for " Smoked eel tagliatelle "?

Generally, my husband uncorks a bottle of Prosecco from Conegliano-Valdobbiadene (Venetian wine) to match to my smoked eel tagliatelle dish. We like very much Prosecco produced by Le carline. We knew this farm and its owners several years ago and can guarantee that their wines are really good.
Another choice could be Gavi sparkling wine from Piedmont.