Once upon a time I saw this photo through tumblr and it reminded me of all the kinds of yum things I like. Aside from pasta. Because as much as I LOVE pasta, I do not love the 2 day stomach ache that ensues after eating it.
Now on closer inspection, it doesn’t appear to be a carbonara at all, in that the pasta looks dry and nothing like any kind of egg-and-cheese-derived-sauce. So there was hope! Damnit. So I decided that I needed to make a Paleo salmon carbonara. Yes, a dairy free carbonara. With salmon. And leeks. All my favorite foods, really.
Paleo Salmon Carbonara with Leeks
Flaked baked salmon tossed with a dairy free paleo coconut milk based carbonara sauce along with leeks and spaghetti squash “noodles”.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1lb of salmon, baked and flaked as below
- 3 cups of cooked and shredded spaghetti squash as below
- 1/4ish onion, diced
- 2ish tblsp preferred fat
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped (unless you’re a wuss, in which case, scale back!)
- 1 leek, sliced
- black and red pepper to taste
- Splash of chicken stock
- 1/4 oz fresh basil, chopped
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 1 egg
- Couple handfuls of spinach
Instructions
- First up, bake your spaghetti squash. Whack the whole thing (with a couple holes in it for steam-escaping-purposes!) in the oven on a baking tray at 375F for an hour. Then cut it in half – on the shortest side for the longest “noodles” – and bake it for another 15 minutes. Maybe my oven is a little under heated, but I find it comes out too crunchy without that extra 15 minutes.
- Bake or otherwise cook your salmon in a way that will make it flake-able but not overcooked. Throw it in an ovenproof dish and bake it at 400F for about 12 minutes, smeared in a oil and black pepper. Then remove it from the skin with a fork and flake. Once it is cooled, check it over for small bone removal and put it to one side.
- At this point, put a pan on the stove at medium heat and melt a couple tablespoons of coconut oil while chopping up some onion and leek. Add to the pan and saute until they began to brown just slightly.
- Next add the chopped up garlic and the spaghetti squash, sauteed until the garlic became fragrant, then seasoned pretty liberally with black and red pepper.
- If your spaghetti squash is still a tad more crunchy than you would like, chuck in a splash of chicken stock and cover with a lid until the “noodles” soften a bit more.
- Once the “noodles” are almost where you want them, beat the egg with the half cup of coconut milk, turn down the heat to low and stir that mixture into the pan, then add the flaked salmon.
- Remove the pan from the heat so that the egg doesn’t start to scramble and as the coconut milk and egg mixture starts to thicken, add in the fresh basil and spinach. Stir until the spinach wilts and remove from the heat.
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