Pasta with Seafood, Basil and Peas
Pasta with seafood is an easy way to make a tasty breakfast. Good pasta, an affordable seafood mix (frozen seafood cocktail) and a few vegetables.
It is odd that a fresh-frozen seafood mix is called a “seafood cocktail” here. The origin of the word “cocktail” is still disputed. The most plausible version is that it comes from the English cock-tail, a hint at colorful layered drinks. Though, in their variety of colors, such mixes often do look a lot like a rooster’s tail.
In Italy, seafood and seafood mixes are called frutti di mare. They most often include shrimp, mussels, various shellfish, squid and octopus. As a rule, all the sea creatures in such mixes are small. Seafood is usually blanched or boiled before freezing, so it is easy and quick to cook. You simply add it to a soup, salad or any other dish almost at the end of cooking. It is a kind of convenience product for quickly making all sorts of dishes: seafood risotto, seafood pasta, seafood pizza, seafood salad and so on.
Either way, Italian cuisine has plenty of recipes with seafood. There are many variations, and the recipes are often quite exotic.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Pasta 250 g
- Water for cooking the pasta 2–3 l
- Salt for the pasta water 7 g per 1 l of water
- Seafood mix 250 g
- Parmesan 30 g
- Basil 3 sprigs
- Parsley 3 sprigs
- Green peas 100 g
- Olive oil 3 tbsp
- Salt, black pepper, sugar, lemon Spices:
Step-by-step recipe
Pasta and seafood both cook quickly, and the choice of seafood is up to you. You can use just mussels, put together a mix of ready-made frozen shellfish, or buy a pack of ready “seafood cocktail”. If the seafood is only frozen, without blanching, like a “seafood cocktail”, boil it first.
Boil the seafood in plain, lightly salted water for no more than 2-3 mins, or it will turn tough and rubbery. By the way, the cooking liquid can be used as a stock for risotto.
Grate the Parmesan. Put only the leaves of the basil and parsley into a blender, add the Parmesan and blitz everything. You will get almost dry crumbs of a beautiful green color, which will be the topping for the pasta.
Boil the green peas in water with 1 tsp of sugar (5 g) added, and they will keep their pleasant green color.
Cook the pasta: any short Italian pasta, such as penne, fusilli or farfalle. Bring 2-3 liters of water to a boil in a pot and add salt at 7 g per liter of water. Cook the pasta in the boiling water for the time given on the package.
Drain the cooked pasta in a colander, let the water run off and transfer it to a deep bowl. Add the boiled peas and the seafood. Toss thoroughly.
In a small bowl, mix the olive oil with 1-2 tsp of lemon juice, add pepper to taste and whisk with a fork. Pour this olive oil dressing over the pasta with seafood.
Divide the pasta between plates and sprinkle with the Parmesan and herbs.
Serve the pasta with seafood hot. You can garnish it with sprigs of herbs.
Calories and macros
860 kcal
Serving ≈ 480 g
- Protein44 g21% of kcal
- Fat28 g31% of kcal
- Carbs99 g48% of kcal
100 g182 kcalProtein 9.3 gFat 6 gCarbs 20.7 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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