#68 - Seafood Ragu
Hello all,
The unseasonably warm British weather from last week had me thinking about holiday food. It may still only be March, and the heating may be firmly back on, but after a long, dark winter, we were allowed to dream again of the promise of sun on skin, swimming in the sea, salty crisps on the balcony and seafood demolished in the evening.
A dish I always want on holiday is a seafood pasta. It doesn’t matter where in the world I am. I even had one at a beach resort in Vietnam, and it was EXCELLENT - no regrets. I thought I’d give you a taste of that summer sunshine and do you a recipe for a creamy seafood ragu. It tastes like an evening spent on the seafront with a cold rosé in your hand, with fresh freckles on your nose and a deck of cards popped to one side on the table.
You’ll also get my recommendations for the best kitchen pans (from baking dishes, to saucepans, to casserole dishes), to suit a range of budgets.
Enjoy!
Sophie x
The Recipe
Seafood Ragu
This one would be GREAT to cook a date, or you could scale it up and whip it up for an easy dinner party dish.
Part of the fun of seafood pasta for me is the admin of removing the prawn shells, but I know some people aren’t a fan of this. In order to appeal to these folk, and to make it as ‘ragu-y’ as possible, I’ve decided to mince up the seafood here for easy slurping. I have to say, I might be a convert to this way of doing it.
The rules of cooking squid are either that you cook it quickly (like deep frying or grilling), or very slowly in a braise. We are going for option B here, which may feel counterintuitive, but the squid will toughen up, then soften again in the cooking time. Prawns do not follow the same rule however, so you want to make sure that they are chopped small and added near the end.
I’ve used a chilli paste here, as a found a really nice looking one in the cupboard as I was moving house. I mean something like this Seggiano one or this M&S one, but by all means swap it for chipotle paste, or even a finely chopped fresh chilli.
Serves 2