We love to find seaside restaurants in Italy with catch-of-the-day platters filled with seafood – everything caught that morning. Make your decision quickly so you can get what you want. The platter is usually presented to other tables. Once that fish or the langoustines are gone, they’re gone.
Waiters typically explain each type of fish. You hear all of the options on how the chef recommends preparing each fish. We often hear crudo (raw, similar to sashimi), pasta, or soup. During our trip to Ischia this summer, we had a scorpionfish cooked two ways at Ristorante Bar da Coco’. We started with fish pasta and then roasted fish with potatoes and tomatoes.
We’ve had fish pasta so much in Italy, we decided to recreate the dish at home. Now it’s one of our weeknight dinners. We can’t get scorpionfish in California, so we’ve been using chili pepper or rockfish. Other options are snapper or cod. Find a local white fish or a high-quality frozen option and use that. We love bucatini pasta. It’s a thin tube, better for catching sauce. If you can’t find bucatini pasta, you can order it here or try another kind of pasta like linguine.
Italian Fish Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes
Ingredients
- 400 g bucatini
- 1 lb white fish, like rockfish, chili pepper, snapper cut into 1-inch chunks
- ½ onion, diced
- 1 clove garlic diced
- 1 chili, crushed
- 100 ml dry white wine
- 500 g cherry tomatoes, halved
- a few sprigs of parsley, chopped
- olive oil
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
- Boil a pot of well-salted pasta water, so that it tastes like the ocean. Cook pasta until al dente, about a minute less than directed on the package.
- In a saute pan, cook the garlic, onion, and chili and oil on medium heat until it softens.
- Add the tomatoes cook until they begin to break down.
- Add a small scoop of pasta water to the pan and allow the tomatoes to break down further and create a sauce.
- Add the fish and cook for about three minutes.
- Add the wine and parsley and cook for a few minutes.
- If the pan begins to dry out, add a splash more pasta water. Add the pasta to the pan and toss to coat. Salt to taste.
Try other favorite pasta recipes:
- Lobster Pasta inspired by The Amalfi Coast
- Penne Alla Vodka
- Sicilian Almond Pesto Pasta
- Baked Pasta with Prosciutto and Fontina Cheese