Smoked Eel Carbonara with Squid Ink Cavatelli and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

This dish came about, as many dishes do, because we had an abundance of an ingredient to make use of—in this instance, smoked eel. Chef de Cuisine Joe Anthony played around with it and came up with a number of dishes. This was the best. Any smoked fish will work. Bluefish would be interesting. We buy our eel cooked and smoked so it’s easy to remove the skin and spine from the meat, reserving the spine to fortify the sauce. Also, we’ve paired this pasta in a cavatelli shape