Fresh pasta elevates many dishes and gives a luxurious touch to them
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 5 € pp)
- Salt
- 400 g fresh pasta without eggs or 320g dry bavette
- 300 g baby squids
- 800 ml fish stock
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 garlic cloves
- 8 cherry tomatoes
- 1 peperoncino in small pieces
- 10 g toasted pine nuts
- 20 g raisins
- EV olive oil
- fresh fennel
It is difficult to find baby squids, especially if you don’t live near the sea. In this case you can buy fresh common squids and cut it in pieces. Baby squids are much cheaper that the normal ones. Maybe because it is more difficult to clean and prepare them as they also contain a very small backbone (quill) that it must be removed before cooking.
So, first of all we clean the baby squids and remove their backbones.
Wait a minute!!!!! I forgot to tell you that first of all we must prepare the fresh pasta, if we use it. How? Just learn our unique guide to pasta fresca, the most complete guide on the web!!! You can find it here . We cut the pasta in bavette, that means flat shaped, a little bit narrower than tagliatelle. We must also put the raisins in lukewarm water to soak.
Meanwhile we heat the fish (or seafood) stock, we add some salt, the bay leaf and the baby squids. We leave them till completely tender, about 45 to 60 minutes. We remove them and we reduce the stock to about 100 ml.
In a cold wok we add some olive oil and the garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled but smashed. We turn the heat on and we gently fry them till golden. We remove the solid part, we increase the heat and we sauté the already cooked baby squids for a minute, just to reduce their humidity and concentrate their flavour. We remove the squids and we add the cherry tomatoes (cut in halves) and the minced peperoncino. We sauté for 1/2 minute, not more.
Meanwhile, in a big pot with salted water we boil the bavette for about 1,5 minutes if they are fresh or for the indicated al dente time if they are dry. We transfer them in the pan with the cherry tomatoes, we add the baby squids, the raisins, the reduced stock, salt and maybe some more olive oil. We move continuously the pan in order to bind the sauce.
We put in plates, we add the toasted pine nuts and chopped fennel and we serve.
