Tagliatelle alla Bryan and YiRan

Sometimes when life throws you lemons, you've just gotta make lemonade. But what happens when you're trying to make lemonade and life gives you limes?

We set out to make Mario Batali's Tagliatelle with Tuna Ragu from his book Molto Italiano. The recipe calls for red onions sautéed with rosemary and garlic, seared tuna, all simmered together with a marinara sauce.

We got right down to it. We thinly sliced the red onion:

Pulled the rosemary leaves from the branch:

Chopped up the garlic, and prepared the marinara sauce. We were pretty much all ready to go.

We then went to the fridge and pulled out our tuna, hand packaged by the grocer just a few hours earlier. And then we saw it.

Oh no! That doesn't look right!

This was no tuna at all! The grocer had given us salmon instead, and we didn't notice it until right then. 

Salmon has an entirely different consistency and flavor profile from fresh tuna. While fresh tuna will stay relatively true to form while cooked, salmon will flake. Tuna also has a more subdued flavor relative to salmon that is better able to compliment a marinara sauce. Salmon on the other hand  has a more powerful flavor that would not pair well with a plan marinara sauce.

What to do? Everything was already prepared - all we had left to do at this point was cook the fish and throw it in the sauce, but that wouldn't do with the salmon. One option would have been to cook it separately and eat it on the side, but that didn't seem ideal to either of us. We could also save the salmon for the next day and make a separate dish, but we already had our ingredients for our next meals and this would throw everything off.

So we thought: what goes well with salmon? How do we normally see salmon and pasta paired, if at all? What we remembered was that often we see it with a cream or butter sauce. Since salmon has a very distinctive flavor, it's paired with these types of sauces so that the sauces compliment the flavor without overpowering it. We had a marinara sauce....but with a simple change we could get close.

We ran down to the corner grocer and picked up a pint of cream. We added a touch of vodka to the simmering onions and rosemary and turned the heat up high to evaporate the alcohol, while in another pan we started cooking the salmon. After the alcohol had evaporated we poured in the cream and let everything simmer together for a few minutes while the cream started to thicken. A touch of salt, a little pepper, and our cream sauce was ready to go.

We combined this with the marinara sauce and all of a sudden we had a tomato cream sauce - a much better compliment for the salmon. While the salmon continued to cook, we chopped up some fresh parsley and added it in. Then we flaked off the salmon and dropped it into the sauce. Lastly, we seasoned it again with salt and pepper, and all of a sudden we had a fairly delicious concoction on our hands.

The Result 

Our sauce was served over fresh tagliatelle, garnished with more fresh parsley, and paired with one of our favorite wines. All in all, given the circumstances, this ended up being a pretty good dish! The tomato cream sauce complimented the salmon well without overpowering it, the rosemary added a tremendous flavor to the fish, and none of our ingredients had to go to waste.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation - an unexpected meat or vegetable, or something else gone wrong, don't despair. While it may seem like your plan has been derailed, it's actually an opportunity to try something out that's all you!