From The Black Lagoon With Love
Here's a romantic little number that I pulled whilst holidaying in Alghero earlier this year. It was my first visit to the local fishmongers, and jubilant that I'd located the place I purchased pretty much the first thing i could both identify and request with my pigeon Italian (the words for both having flown the coup long ago). I had spied bundles of this delightful goth-pasta delicacy the day before so already had a plan in hand. Of course, I had forgotten what bastards our bearded friends are to prep and my early evening love-in began more as a sort of a chain gang type affair with the two of us crowding round the kitchen sink to wash trim scrub, wash trim scrub. Added to that, there were the rather meagre and blunt kitchen utensils to contend with. I don't think it's ever taken quite so much blood and abuse to zest a lemon. I can tell you that citric acid in an open wound only adds to the 'excitement'. When we finally got there, the meal was divine. I've kept hold of some of the sepia spaghetti that I bought on the holiday, the same unfortunately can't be said of the romance...Sepia Spaghetti Marinara
- sepia spaghetti
- mussels
- white wine
- whole lemon or two
- dried red chillis
- garlic
- white onion
- oil, butter etc etc
- so, the rule, I think with molluscs is... keep them chilled out of water until just before you need them (they'll die if left in fresh water). Disregard anything that is either broken or that is open and doesn't close with a tap or. Clean the sods by scrubbing well under running water and remove the beards with a good yank. When cooked, leave any that haven't opened.
- slice and dice the onion and garlic, zest the lemon, crush the chillis...
- for some reason, I then split the above preparation into two portions - the first part I put in a frying pan with a knob or so of butter to saute. The second, I put in a deep saucepan in which to steam the mussels. The intention here, I assume in hindsight, was to mix the spaghetti with my the garlic and lemon flavourings in the frying pan and then heap mussels directly from the saucepan without having to strain the cooking broth for flavours.
- so that's what I did... I steamed the prepped mussels in a deep saucepan with some of my onion and lemon mixture and a good glug of white wine. Cooking with lid on, medium heat, they should take around 5 minutes and certainly no longer.
- at pretty much the same time you should be cooking the sepia spaghetti in a separate saucepan
- whilst also in the process of saute-ing your remaining onion, garlic, lemon, chilli in yet another pan. As I say, I slug of olive oil, generous knob of butter and seasoning are what you want to start things off with here, with a slosh of the white wine to finish.
- with pasta complete and mussels opening and acquiescent, simply fold the spaghetti into the pan mixture and serve all from the table
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