whine & dine

Whenever bunny and I have guests over for a fussy-ish dinner, more often that not, she gets asked if she eats “like this” (read: if I cook fancy, fussy, multi-course dinners with LOADS of washing up after….) every day. Obviously, she doesn’t. In fact, most of the time when we eat in, I cook really simple stuff – aglio olio, fried noodles with egg, minced pork and XO sauce, steamed rice or rice porridge with one or two Chinese stir-fry dishes. Rice porridge is bunny’s favourite, but pasta is mine.

A good pasta dish is very wholesome and nourishing, and it’s a full meal on one plate. It’s also inexpensive, and the ones I like best can be prepped and cooked during the time it takes the water to heat up for me to cook my pasta. I’m not a huge fan of tomato based sauces – I prefer the creamy and oil-based ones, which means I’m rarely braising a ragù for my weeknight pasta sauce.

When bunny and I were in London earlier this year, we ate quite a few meals at this little deli just round the corner from where we were staying. During our last meal there, I had spaghetti tossed very simply with some crabmeat, the entire thing brightened with some lemon and flat-leaf parsley. I’d KIV-ed the dish in the to-replicate-at-home folder in my head, and finally got round to it tonight as we had Y over for dinner to welcome her back from her training in NY.

Instead of using only lemon juice, I swapped most of it out for lemon zest so that the dish would be more fragrant and just have a very mild zing, and added in freshly chopped chillies and toasted pine nuts as well for texture. I think it’s best served with linguine, but you can probably use any other noodly pasta you prefer. It would probably go pretty well with fusilli too, as a cold pasta-salad.

Linguine with Spicy Crabmeat and Pine Nuts
olive oil
8-10 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4 chilli padis, finely chopped
200g crabmeat (buy it tinned from a good brand so you avoid that fishy smell)
zest and juice of 1 lemon
60g pine nuts, toasted
400g dried linguine
1 tbsp finely chopped coriander or Italian flat-leaf parsley, plus extra to serve
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
chilli flakes to serve

Bring 4L of water to a boil with 40g of salt. Cook the pasta until al dente.

Heat 5 tbsp of olive oil in a large sauté pan, and add the chopped garlic and chilli. Cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant and the garlic is lightly browned. Add in the crab meat, and stir to heat through, 2-3 minutes. Stir in 2-3 tbsp of the lemon juice, all the lemon zest, and pine nuts. Season.

Once the pasta is al dente, drain, reserving about 1 cup of the cooking water. Toss the pasta with the crab meat, adding cooking water (or stock) if it seems a bit dry. Taste, adding more lemon juice if necessary, then remove from the heat. Add the coriander, and drizzle over 3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, and toss to combine. Divide amongst warmed plates and scatter some dried chilli flakes and more coriander over. Serve immediately.