Up until now I'd assumed that the scariest thing to come out of Sicily was the Mafia. Well today I would be aquainted with a Sicilian Salad which, although less murderous, was just as terrifying.
Lolz and I are doing a 10k race on Sunday so tonight is pasta time and given that we had a few of the ingredients in the fridge, the Prawn Linguine made us an offer we couldn't refuse. I was intrigued by the breadcrumb accompaniment and there were a few ingredients which looked like they would perk up an otherwise fairly standard tomato sauce. I will admit that I had a couple of cheeky drinks before heading home but did not feel this would have any impact on my cooking skills. It actually looked fairly straightforward, with the salad being prepared in the food processor and the pasta sauce being a simple case of frying a few things and adding the passata to it.
Once the breadcrumbs were done, I added the chilli to the pan with the anchovies, saffron and cinnamon which proceeded to exude some rather asphyxiating fumes. After recovering from a fit of coughing I added the prawns and tomato sauce.
It got plated up and prompted a few curious looks by Lolz who was clearly unconvinced by the salad and breadcrumb accompaniment. The pasta is ok. It's kind of drowning in tomato sauce a bit and the saffron and cinnamon flavours are somewhat overwhelmed by the chilli but there's nothing too offensive about it. Much like previous pasta dishes it was just a bit boring - the inclusion of a few unusual ingredients doesn't hide the fact that it's just pasta in tomato sauce.
And so the salad. I omitted the sliced lemon - I remembered the tomato salad I made with the Daal Curry and how the chopped lemon ruined it so I replaced it with juice and zest. Despite this it was just plain wrong. Fennel, celery and mint and three fairly pungent flavours. Two of those ingredients worked ok in the watercress and pea salad I made the other day but adding fennel made it too much. We actually ended up chucking it away - possibly the first time we have thrown any 15 meal away! Oh and the breadcrumbs didn't do anything for us either!
Lolz gave the dish 5/10. Difficulty rating 2/10.
Wow, different strokes for different folks! I loved this one.
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