Yes, pasta again and this time, with mentaiko (marinated cod roe or pollock roe). By itself, the mentaiko is salty and sometimes spicy, which is why its normally eaten raw with rice (only if it’s sashimi quality) or used in cooking for flavor. It goes really well with fatty foods like cream and mayonnaise.
This dish is pretty simple and easy to prepare. Almost foolproof!
Ingredients (for 2 pax)
- 2 pieces of mentaiko (or 100gram mentaiko)
- Pasta of your choice (I used angel hair/quick cook spaghetti)
- 1 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 3 tbsp Japanese mayonnaise
- 8 cloves garlic, minced
- Seaweed strips for topping
- Ikura for garnishing (optional)
- 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese for use in the sauce
- 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese for sprinkling over pasta
- 2 birds eye chilli/chilli padi, sliced
- 2 eggs
- 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 20g butter
- Handful of chopped chives for garnishing (optional)
Instructions
Use a spoon to scrape out all the contents into a small bowl. Remove the sac
- Remove sac from bowl
- Add 2-3 tbsp cream and mix into the mentaiko.
- The mentaiko cream mixture will make it much easier to combine into the pasta sauce later.
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add the minced garlic and sliced chilli padi
- Add in the rest of the cream once the garlic is golden and before the butter starts to brown. Simmer for a couple of minutes.
- Add in the mentaiko cream mixture and cheese
- Stir in thoroughly
- Add in the mayonnaise (this below picture is from a previous mentaiko pasta attempt) and stir to incorporate. Turn off the heat
- Cook the pasta
- Meanwhile, prepare a pot of almost boiling water to poach your eggs and add the vinegar to the pot.
- And as I’m no expert in poaching eggs, here’s a website that shows you how to poach eggs 😉
- http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/easy_poached_eggs/
- Drain the cooked pasta and immediately add it to the sauce. Toss over medium heat to combine before removing the pan from the fire.
- Dish out the pasta. As you can see, this amount could probably feed 3 but I was greedy ;(
- Make a little well in the centre, you’ll drop your poached egg into here later.
- Add the egg into the centre of the pasta and garnish with seaweed, chopped chives, cheese and ikura
And its done! Its a very rich dish so the tanginess from the japanese mayo and the spice from the chilli helps to dispel that sense of “jelakness”.
This recipe is worth bookmarking!
have you tried making this previously? its yummy too XD
I will try soon. I’m still full from the uni pasta.
Sorry, but this is just wrong. You don’t cook the mentaiko in a pan with cream, instead you should be using the heat of the spaghetti to just melt the butter, cheese and lightly cook the mentaiko.
Hi there, I meant for this to be a mentaiko carbonara recipe as I find that mentaiko goes really well with cream and mayo. It’s a similiar idea to what you might get from seared salmon mentaiko sushi in some eateries. However yes you are right, that is another way to cook mentaiko pasta, and a way to enjoy its fresh flavour. Some like it with a little lemon as well and topped with some microgreens. Others use dashi in their preparations but it all depends on personal preference really. Thank you for pointing out another cooking method though, very much appreciated!