When my husband was in Europe ten years or so ago (we weren’t together then), he ate a dish in Italy that he particularly liked. He describes it as a spaghetti-like pasta, but thinner, with a light sauce that is colored yellow. It’s not a heavy cream sauce, and it’s not tomato-based.
What on earth did he have? I’d love to try to recreate it for him, and I’m guessing the pasta is angel-hair, but I don’t even know where to start on the sauce. Does it have saffron in it or something?
I’ve managed to get pretty close recreating meringue from Switzerland for him, but for this one I need help!
Maybe a yellow tomato confit? When you said yellow I automatically thought “yellow tomato confit” but if you’re positive it doesn’t have either heavy dairy (cream or cheese) or any tomato flavouring whatsoever…I found this recipe that says “creamy yellow sauce” where the yellow comes from the egg yolks.
I am guessing that it’s not saffron because it has a distinctive taste and the yellow colour in a sauce almost always means there’s dairy involved.
Hmmm. Yellow tomato confit and the creamy yellow sauce are both possibilities - I think he just said no tomatoes because it wasn’t a red sauce.
I’m pretty sure it’s not carbonara, as I make that a lot, and I think he would have noticed by now. It’s an excellent thought, though, since I first made carbonara in an attempt to find this mysterious sauce!
Some help here… What did it taste of? Was it sweet or sour or salty? Herbacious and fresh? Rich and heavy? Was there cheese? Where was he in Italy when he ate it?
Otherwise, the best I can suggest is you do a recipe search for “cappellini alla”.
Was it a roasted Pepper sauce? It might have used yellow bell peppers.
He is maddeningly non-specific about it. I grilled him further over dinner (lemon spaghetti, which was delicious, but wasn’t it), and he insists that it is YELLOW, as if it had saffron in it – and I had not mentioned saffron to him. So that does help me.
