On Tuesday I found myself wanting dinner and after a weekend of a rather meat heavy diet fancied fish. This is roughly what I ended up cooking. I don’t have measurements for most of the ingredients. Also, as you’ll see in the post that follows this, what you don’t use…. makes dessert! The most important part of a meal. This served three but you can figure it out depending on how hungry your family is.
Ingredients:
6 Scallops
12 Large Tiger Prawns*
3 Squid*
Large Handful Cooked Mussels*
150ml Double Cream
2 Large Egg Yolks
2 Cloves Garlic
Flat Leaf (normal) Parsley
Oyster Mushrooms
Small Onion**
Spring Onion**
300g Linguine (Don’t buy cheap pasta)
Olive Oil
1/2 Lemon
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
* The measurements here aren’t available as I was plucking things from the fish counter having bought the scallops. The prawns I got came uncooked with tails on skewers. I got two skewers worth. The squid was well prepared ready to slice and about 5-6″ long. The mussels were bought as though you cupped both hands and filled them. Primary to bulk the rest of the dish out.
** I didn’t put onion in, I mention it here because you can. Cook the Small Onion finely chopped with the garlic. Finely chop 2 spring onions and add whilst reducing the cream.
Bring a large saucepan of water, with some salt to the boil. Check the cooking time of your pasta, mine was 11minutes.
Heat some olive oil in a decent sized pan, when hot but not smoking add the crushed garlic and scallops. Whilst the garlics browns slightly turn the scallops regularly. Turn the heart down to a medium temperature. Slice the squid into 1/4-1/2″ strips and add to the pan along with the tiger prawns and oyster mushrooms. When the scallops have cooked through add the double cream. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Now is probably a good time to throw the pasta into your boiling water and set the timer on the oven appropriately.
Return your attention to the seafood and cream. You should be stirring this often. It should be bubbling gently and reducing, not boiling away. Add a good handful of finely chopped parsley and stir in, add the cooked mussels at this point. If you don’t have enough sauce for your taste by all means add a dash more cream.
When the cream has reduced to your satisfaction squeeze the half lemon juice into the pan and stir in swiftly. When the pasta is ready you should quickly stir in the 2 large egg yolks, keep the whites for dessert. You can either serve this on the pasta or drain and stir the pasta into the seafood. Decorate with some more finely chopped parsely. You could even offer some freshly grated parmesan.
The above recipe was adapted from one that used onions, only used cooked prawns and didn’t use mushrooms so feel free to use the seafood you want and leave out mushrooms if you don’t like them… etc. etc.
Next a hackish desert!