I first ate this dish in the fabulous River Cafe Restauarant in Fulham, London. I loved the combination of flavours, particularly the heat from the chillies with the fantastic crab meat.
Imagine how pleased I was when I decided to replicate this dish at home. It really does taste as good!
It is a fantastic dinner party starter or main course for supper.
Ingredients:
2 large live male crabs, 2-3 kg in weight
3 fresh chillies (4 if you enjoy it hot!)
2 handfuls of flat leaved parsley, finely chopped
1 handful of finely chopped corriander
juice of 4 lemons
3 garlic cloves, ground with a little sea salt
250 ml olive oil
500 gr Linguine
sea salt and ground black pepper
extra virigin olive oil
In a large pot bring sufficient water to the boil and place the crabs in (you may wish to put the crabs in the freezer for some time prior to this if concerned as to the crab's welfare). Boil gently for 20 minutes, removing from the water and leave to cool.
Having removed the legs and claws, break the bodies carefully and remove the brown meat along with any juices into a bowl. Now remove the white meat from the claws and mix in the bowl.
Finely chop the chillies (seeds in for extra heat, out for a less hot version) and add to the coriander and parsley (reserve a little parsley for garnish) , lemon juice and crushed garlic. Now mix with the crab mixture and stir in the olive oil. The resulting sauce is quite wet.
Cook the linguine as per packet instructions and drain thoroughly. Immediately stir in the crab sauce, mixing well.
Serve immediately, sprinkling each serving with a little of the reserved parsley and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil and freshly ground black pepper.
Plenty of crusty bread to mop up the sauce and a very cold flinty white wine will make this a memorable starter or supper!
Enjoy!
This is the BEST pasta I have tasted and your recipe is marvellous . Now Swee Hock expects me to cook this to perfection!
Posted by: doris | 08/18/2009 at 02:56 PM
I absolutely love this crab linguine recipe! The only things I change were omitting the sea salt (I bloat just looking at salt) and opting in for whole noodles. Thanks so much for sharing! If you would like to share it on Crab-o-Licious, please do on our crab meat recipes page and feel free to leave a link back to Paul's Kitchen! Cheers!
Posted by: Beverly | 12/21/2009 at 08:43 PM