The idea behind this take-your-breath-away pasta sauce comes from the caipirinha – Brazil’s national cocktail – made with cachaça, lime juice and sugar. Cachaça is a spirit made from sugar cane, so probably the nearest widely available equivalent to it in Europe is rum.

You can make the sauce ahead of time and simply cook the pasta just before you eat –  estimate 100g/3.5 oz for women and 150g/5 oz for a hungry man. Use open pasta such as farfalle (bow tie pasta) or fusilli as that holds the cream best.

For how to make a caipirinha, follow this link.

For more about cachaça, follow this link.

Recipe for Brazilian salmon and rum sauce for pasta

for 4

• 390g/14 oz salmon fillet, with skin still on
• Olive oil
• 1 banana shallot, peeled and chopped
• 480 ml/2 cups chicken stock made with 2 stock cubes
• 240 ml/1 cup double cream
• 80 ml/⅓ cup cachaça …. Or alternatively dark rum
• Juice and zest of one lime
• 10 stems of fresh coriander, chopped
• Cracked pepper and smoked salt

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C
2. Season the salmon fillets. Oil a flat baking tray, put the fillets on and roast for seven minutes until just cooked through.
3. Leave it to cool, skin it, and then flake it onto the baking tray (why make more washing up by using something else.
4. Coat the base of a saucepan with olive oil and gently fry the banana shallot unitl just translucent.
5. Add the stock, bring to the boil and reduce for about five minutes.
6. Reduce the heat, add the cream and cook for another few minutes or so until it begins to thicken.
7. Stir in the rum and the lime juice and zest. Add the salmon and most of the coriander (save some for garnish later).

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWb90-afKHw]