Fish Swims Well with Pasta – Farfalle with Anchovies

There are so many types and shapes of pasta and many more philosophies about which pasta suits which sauce best. Nevertheless, they all taste even better when prepared onboard a charter yacht, which I also mentioned quite a few times. This time I got the inspiration to share with you one pretty unusual recipe for pasta with fish.

Unusual, I say, because fish is very rarely served with pasta in my country. Let’s see what it is about.

Farfalle refers to bow-tie shaped pasta which name is derived from Italian word meaning butterfly – farfalla. This type of pasta is chosen for this recipe because its shape enables fine merging with the sauce. We will see later there are more reasons why farfalle shape suits best for this occasion.

Farfalle should be cooked in a lot of boiling water. In order to reach additional flavor you can add a pinch of salt, few drops of olive oil and one big clove of garlic, squeezed or cut in large pieces.

Cook farfalle strictly according to the manufacturer’s instructions in order to gain a perfect consistency of the pasta. The sauce should be cooked prior to the pasta or parallel with it, depending on the type of the cooker and the dimensions of your onboard kitchen.

Either way, remove the pits from some 80 g of black marinated olives, cut the olives and put them on the warm olive oil in a deep pan. Don’t fry the olives! Add two squeezed cloves of garlic and simmer it all on the moderate heat until the garlic leaves its scent.

Add four peeled and cut tomatoes (better fresh than tinned) and continue simmering stirring it gently. Add some salt and black pepper and after approximately two minutes add half of glass of dry white wine. After another two minutes of simmering the wine should be vaporized and you should remove the pan off the heat.

Put cooked farfalle into the sauce; add thinly sliced marinated or salted anchovies (40 g) and dry oregano leaves. Stir it all well but gently and take it back on fire. Warm it up once again making sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of pan.

This dish could be prepared at any time of the day but I suggest you serve it for dinner, accompanied with the sunset and a glass of dark red wine. Farfalle with anchovies could also be served as cool or even cold starter.

Once again – why farfalle? Well, since the sauce contains lot of rather large pieces of tomatoes and fishes it is a lot easier to catch them along with bow-tie or butterfly shaped pasta than trying to wrap them around with spaghetti…

I wish you a calm sea, a fine wind and a strong mast!