The Best Seafood Pasta you will Ever Eat.
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 5:50 am
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!
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!