When I imagine eating in Italy, I often imagine myself sitting in a seaside restaurant ordering this exact dish. I often try to recreate the dishes I try when traveling at home. I don’t see any reason why not to. I had intended to only make enough to feed two people below, but ended up making enough food to feed four people. No worries though, I put the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow. I am doing well. I am almost finished with the cookbook. It seems I am always almost finished with the cookbook these days, I think like any large piece of work, the last few stages of work and proofreading seem to take the longest because you know the work so well and it is harder to motivate yourself – well this is the case with me at least. But for real this time, I am almost there. And so the reality that I can go back to blogging as per normal is something I am looking forward to. For now, I want to share the recipe I made for lunch today for me and my mom. Don’t be intimidated cooking with seafood – I was at the start, but it is really easy. The trick here is to add your seafood in stages to the pot so they don’t overcook. The beauty of this recipe is that you can’t really get the seafood proportions wrong – have more mussels than clams, that’s fine just use those. Prefer squid to salmon? That’s fine, just substitute that in. Use whatever is easiest for you. The yummy flavour for this dish comes from the white wine in my opinion – any white wine is fine, a local Cypriot variety adds that Cypriot touch, so you can guess what I prefer. OK, enjoy this recipe for now and speak to you again soon.
serves: 4
difficulty: easy
time: 30 minutes
ingredients
3 garlic cloves, finely diced
1 shallot, finely diced
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped basil
pinch of hot red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup white wine, local Cypriot wine is great but any variety is OK
4 large prawns
140 grams small shrimp
6 mussels (100 grams)
12 clams (250 grams), with or without shell
150 grams salmon fillet, (squid is OK if you prefer)
recipe
1. In a large pot filled with salted water, cook the pasta until al dente.
2. While the pasta is cooking, in a large pot add the olive oil and place over high heat. Saute the garlic, onions, red pepper flakes for two minutes. Add the tomatoes for 20 seconds. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the wine and let it evaporate for 2 minutes. Add the clams, large prawns and mussels and place a lid on top of the pot and let cook for 5 minutes, until the mussels and clams open up (they will only open up if using fresh clams and mussels). Add the salmon and the baby shrimp and cook for another 2 minutes with the lid on top of the pot. Add the basil and parsley.
3. Place the pasta in a large serving dish. Pour the seafood sauce all over the pasta. Serve garnished with freshly grated parmesan cheese and finely diced fresh parsley.
