The Best Seafood Pasta you will Ever Eat.

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peter
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The Best Seafood Pasta you will Ever Eat.

Post by peter »

Take 160 grams of raw peeled king prawns and cut each prawn in half. Take 80 grams of scallops and also cut into pieces of about the same size as the halved prawns.

Set your pasta (spaghetti or linguini and enough for two people) to boil in well seasoned water (taste the water - use your palate to get it to the point where if say, it were a soup it would be the right saltiness).

Assuming a cooking time of about 12 mins for the pasta, after about 4 mins set a heavy based frying pan on a low heat and melt a couple of good knobs of butter and a splash of extra virgin olive oil in it (say 2 oz and 2 tablespoons respectively).

Nb the amounts given here are all a bit rough because you can see what you are doing here, and you know what will suffice for the job.

Put two or three cloves of thinly sliced and chopped garlic into the oil (which should not be hot enough to frizzle in the pan; you are coaxing the flavour of the garlic out, not frying the shit out of it) and also a small quantity of chilli flakes (according to your liking of heat in a dish). After a minute or two of infusing the oil add the chopped seafood to the pan and raise the heat a bit to get it cooking. Season with sea-salt and pepper and stir it about, add some love - this is going to pay you back tenfold.

When the seafood is looking pretty cooked (it'll take a few minutes on this low level heat) add 6 cherry tomatoes (quartered) into the pan and also a handful of fine chopped coriander (fresh). Continue to stir around and keep it moving for a minute or so and then add a half ladle of the pasta water into the mix (not too much, just enough to make a bit of a liquor sauce in the pan). Maybe increase the heat a bit if it needs reducing - you're not making a soup - and work it around as it does so. By now the seafood will be well cooked (but not shrivelled to shit as they would be if they were fried on high heat) and the tomatoes will be breaking down. You're going to be about twelve minutes into the cooking time and the pasta will be ready.

Divide the pasta into two bowls and when you're satisfied that the contents of the frying pan have 'married' into something you'd like to eat, spoon the seafood and the remaining sauce in the pan over the top.

Dust with fresh grated parmesan cheese - the regiano one - and sprinkle a bit of chopped coriander onto the whole. Black pepper from the grater and maybe a splash of truffle oil. If you get your reduction just right, there will be enough sauce just to see a bit in the bottom of the bowls as you eat. The more you reduced it, the better it will coat the pasta, but hey - it will taste so frikkin' great that who cares if you have a bit of soup in the bowl.

All of this assumes that you are going to spring for good quality ingredients - it goes without saying that the better the starting materials, the better the results, but you don't have to be silly about it. Also you are going to need to do your prep in advance and with love. Take your time. Chop your coriander slowly and well: same with the garlic. Get your chilli flakes ready and your parmesan grated (finely). Have everything laid out ready before you start because you are going to need to be focused on that pan, using your eyes, your ears, to get the cooking going at just the speed you want it to (tip; at no point should it be 'frying' like a piece of bacon in a pan).

You make this dish like I have told you and I promise, you'll roll back when you've eaten the last spoonful and know that you've just eaten the best pasta dish you've ever had in your life. People will beat a path to your door for the privilege of having you serve them the your seafood pasta.

As for the list of ingredients - write them out yourself!

;)
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Post by Menolly »

Sounds wonderful, Peter! Cilantro in a pasta sauce... fascinating.

I would attempt only a couple of changes.

First, I like my pasta fairly al dente, so I only boil it for about 7 minutes.
Second, I shallow boil dry pasta. Basically, I lay the pasta flat in a wide pan and just barely cover with water. Once boiling, add salt to taste. Stir the pasta around so it doesn't stick to the pan or to each other. Reduce heat to a gentle boil, but more than a simmer.

Most, but not all, of the water will evaporate by the end of 7 minutes boiling time. However, I find it tends to be enough to bring a sauce together. Instead of adding a ladle of pasta water to the sauce, I add the sauce to the pasta and remaining water to toss together. The water seems to be perfect every time.

I'll definitely give it a shot when I try your receipt.
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Post by peter »

Hi Menolly!

I've been using the method of finishing the pasta in the sauce when I've been making spaghetti aglio e olio, and it really works to get it absorbing the flavours for the last part of the cooking (in the frying pan obviously, where you have been infusing the oil). In the aglio e olio however, I am using considerably more pasta water than I am in this seafood dish, and I don't know if the pasta would finish as well with just this smaller quantity of water. (You could use more water to get over this, thinking about it, and it would work just as well I'm sure.

I find finishing pasta in a frying pan (and sauce) almost demands that it be served al dente because (for some reason) it just doesn't cook as fast as when it is in a large quantity of water in a pan.

My recipe was first cooked a couple of weeks ago and then tweaked with a second preparation on Monday. I was so pleased with it (and so frightened that I would forget what I'd done) that I banged out the post today more as an aide memoire than anything else. But yes - the recipe can be tweaked in whatever way anyone fancies to achieve a more personalized dish (as it were).

I'm researching recipes for cacio e pepe to have a go at for the weekend.I'm just so into these really simple pasta classics at the moment - you have to get them bang on for them to be right, but if you do, then they elevate your appreciation of pasta tenfold. All of a sudden it moves from that lazy mid-week fix-it to the realms of high culinary art. That small number of ingredients has to be balanced perfectly, put together with grace and care, for the magic to work. But when it does the effect is of another dimension!

In addition, I find that the preparation (which has to be meticulous and of the highest level) followed by the execution of the dish......well, the whole thing has an almost Zen tea-ceremony, a meditative aspect almost, to it. You have to be in a mentally ordered state to pull it off. Probably just me, I know, but kitchens have ever been therapeutic places for me!

:D
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Post by peter »

Just a little postscript to the above post - to complete the story as it were.

Wisely is it said that pride comes before a fall, and boy did I fall.

I made the cacio e pepe I spoke about - and to call it a disaster would be an understatement. Somehow I managed to create a ball of chewing gum the size of an orange out of a beautiful block of parmesan cheese. Served in a thin milky liquor and surrounded by verminous pasta, it was inedible to a similar extent as a Dunlop tyre would be.

I retired from the kitchen vowing never to never raise a hand to the hob again, but the next week I did a plate of aglio e olio that was a definite improvement on the previous time I'd done the dish so hey - all part of the learning process eh?

;)
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Post by Savor Dam »

Not sure whether the latest post is still about a seafood pasta -- where a ball of chewing gum is easy to achieve when inattentive to time/temp with respect to proteins -- or a simpler cacio e pepe.

We who inhabit the domestic kitchen daily face the occasional failure, 'tis true. We disappoint ourselves, we may get some critique from those whom we serve...but we seem to never fail to the extent that anyone else in the household steps up to the daily 'shop, cook, serve' grind.

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Post by peter »

:lol: No SD. This was just my cacao e pepe. My seafood pasta is a thing of exquisite beauty to the point where I intend to make it again today (hence the reason I came here, to bone up on the technique.)

;)
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Post by Cord Hurn »

peter wrote:You make this dish like I have told you and I promise, you'll roll back when you've eaten the last spoonful and know that you've just eaten the best pasta dish you've ever had in your life. People will beat a path to your door for the privilege of having you serve them the your seafood pasta.
Wow, I don't doubt it, peter. Your opening post in this thread makes it all sound so good! :P :hearts:
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Post by peter »

:lol: Made it again yesterday Cord Hurn and it was every bit as good as the other times I've made it.

Seriously - I put the first mouthful in and thought, "How did I do this?" Somehow these ingredients just come together into something magical.

Couple of additional points not mentioned above.

Goes without saying really but make sure your pasta bowls are good and hot. Nothing worse than pasta that is cold by the time you get to the end (and you will get to the end of this).

Yesterday, my cherry tomatoes were lovely and sweet but a bit on the small side. I therefore used nine or ten instead of six.

Steal this recipe and open a pasta restaurant selling only this dish. It'll be full every night and I guarantee that you'll finish up a millionaire!

;)
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Post by Cord Hurn »

Thanks to you again, Peter! :mrgreen: :nanaparty:
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Post by peter »

Quick note, this time on my progression in the preparation of aglio e olio. To be able to fashion a dish out of no more than spaghetti, olive oil, water, salt, garlic and chili flakes - now that is something, but done properly this is one of the best pasta dishes you can eat.

It takes practice - the first couple of attempts are a bit hit and miss, but all of a sudden you crack it and bang! Culinary heaven.

I use the method from the YouTube cooking show 'Not Another Cooking Show' and the results are first rate!

The magic of getting a few simple ingredients to fuse into something so beautiful will never stop amazing me, and this dish, perfected, will give you a base upon which to build a skill with pasta that can take you in multiple directions.

As the man says, feed yourself. Go eat!

:)
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Post by Menolly »

Aglio e olio is a dish I've been making for awhile. I use the shallow pan method to cook my pasta, and by the time most of the pasta water has evaporated and the pasta is cooked perfectly, it is the right amount to add the simmered garlic, chili pepper rings (used instead of chili flakes), and oil.

As you say, culinary heaven.
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Post by peter »

That's interesting Menolly. Sounds like you make your sauce in the pan with the spaghetti already in it.

The method I've been using coaxes the flavour of the garlic and chilli out into the oil, then begins the sauce construction by adding pasta water to the frying (broiling?) pan. When a degree of marrying is achieved, the pasta is then transferred over to the frying pan to complete the process. Done this way, I always seem to get a good al dente finish and the pasta is enhanced by absorbing the flavour of the sauce.

Apparently in Italy it is considered a crime to add parmesan to the finished dish, but what do they know! ( ;) ) I do it anyway because I happen to like it, and hang the consequences, but in truth the dish will stand serving perfectly well au naturale (as you might say).

I suppose that by slathering it in parmesan and black pepper I'm almost finishing up with a ciao e pepe really, but who cares! I've also tried adding lemon juice for a different angle, which I enjoyed, but my wife was not so taken with. Horses for courses eh?

:lol:
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Post by Menolly »

I use two pans. The garlic is slowly simmered in the olive oil for ~7 minutes to soften with the banana pepper rings added after about 2 minutes.

The spaghetti is put into a wide saucier big enough for the pasta to lie flat with a hearty pinch of salt and enough water to just cover the pasta. It is brought to a hard boil, and cooked until al dente, again about 7 minutes. By this time most of the pasta water has evaporated, but there is a little left in the pan. I do move the pasta around as it softens and cooks, to prevent sticking.

I then pour the garlic and chili infused oil with the garlic and chili into the pan with the spaghetti and small amount of water and toss.

For me, it turns out perfect. But as you originally said, it did take a few tries to where I can judge the right amount of pasta water is left to emulsify the sauce.
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Post by peter »

I think your method is probably superior Menolly, but I'm a bit limited on kitchen equipment (flat pans etc) but I do have a great cast iron frying pan and a good big saucepan to hand.

I'll drop a few hints next Christmas and see what materialises!

;)
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Post by Menolly »

peter wrote:I'll drop a few hints next Christmas and see what materialises!

;)
:lol:
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