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"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." - James Beard


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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Simple Seafood Pasta for New Years

My husband's birthday is on December 30th, so to make up for decades of conflation with Christmas and New Years, we always celebrate on the 30th and have a quiet night in on the 31st. Often we are suffering from too much cheer the night before, but this year we had a little pep left in us, so I planned a simple seafood pasta dinner.  (I say I planned because due to a late lunch I didn't end up executing it until dinner the next day.)  It is a very, very easy recipe, based on this one from Epicurious, but the seafood makes it a little fancy and you can use just about any seafood you like.  



Aside from the seafood, you need olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, white wine, tomato sauce, parsley and linguine.  



I used bay scallops, large raw shrimp (not jumbo) and a couple of small lobster tails this time.  I've made it with just shrimp and scallops; calamari, shrimp and scallops; even mussels or clams with the shrimp and scallops.  


Boil your water and add your linguine to the pot. I add lots and lots of salt.  Like 2 tablespoons.


If you chop the garlic and shell the seafood before you put the pasta in the water, the sauce and seafood will be done by the time the pasta is cooked.  

Saute the garlic in the olive oil with the chili flakes.  

After a minute or two, add the wine.  If you're using clams or mussels, add them now.  Otherwise let the wine cook for a minute or two and add the tomato sauce.  

Simmer for another minute or two and add the seafood about 4 minutes before the pasta is done.  Let it simmer lightly until the shrimp is pink and the scallops are opaque.  

Once the linguine is done, drain it and add it to the large pan with the seafood and sauce.  Toss with the parsley and serve it up!




This recipe is so quick and easy it surprises me every time.  It is delicious and a little fancy too.  So you can have it on a special occasion like New Years Eve, or get tipsy and snacky and forget about it until New Years Day, or just have it on some random Tuesday night.  



Food Lessons Learned:
  • Not much this time since this is a tried and true recipe, but I guess don't plan a semi-fancy dinner then have a huge lunch at 4pm, then start drinking. Because the chances of making even a simple recipe get pretty slim by that point

Photography Lessons Learned:
  • First, don't balance your box of linguine against your glass of wine for the cast photo. That's just asking for trouble
  • Also, it isn't so easy to take pictures of all the steps, especially with a quickie recipe like this
  • Finally, I figured out how to re-size the photos so hopefully that'll save some time.


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