New favorite recipe: pasta with flaky sole, lemon, almonds and capers…

So now that our family has grown for the summer and includes: me, husband, grandma, good-eater kid, picky-eater kid, and our lovely summer vegetarian visitor, cousin Karin, I’ve been trying to come up with simple and summery recipes that I can make after work to please a crowd. Since Karin eats fish (and I have been on a Trader Joe’s frozen fish kick lately; I bought some wild salmon and lemon sole this weekend) and we all love pasta, this seems like a perfect combination. While mulling it over I remembered a recipe that our old bloggy friend Leslie told me about…soon after she had gotten a copy of the wonderful cookbook: Olives & Oranges by Sara Jenkins, she started raving about this recipe for flaky fish combined with sliced almonds, lemon, capers, and parsley over spaghetti.
She has talked about this dish SO MUCH in fact, that I finally realized I better make it and find out what all the fuss was about.
Well she was right, it’s an amazing dish (full disclosure though: Tim did not like the sliced almonds, his comment was “you know I don’t like nuts in my food.”
So here’s how you make it:
-Boil water and cook your pasta according to the package, making sure to reserve a cup of the cooking water before draining.
-Now I didn’t have spaghetti on-hand (which is kind of crazy), all I had was orecchiette, so I went with it.
-Pour some olive oil in a large dutch oven (enough to just cover the bottom), turn the burner to medium high, and add about two pounds of sole filets, placing the filets in in the pan in a single layer. Cook the filets over medium-high heat without turning; the fish needs to get a nice browned crust on the bottom so you don’t want to take it off too soon. It should take about 8 minutes.
-When the fish is done take it out of the pan and into a large bowl, cover to keep warm.