Seafood Pasta with Lime and Olives

Seafood and pasta

Seafood is usually sold frozen. I don’t buy packaged frozen seafood; I prefer the mixes sold by weight. As a rule, such mixes consist of 6-8 kinds of sea creatures that have been dry-frozen. They are not frozen into a block but pour fairly freely, like hard candies. Seafood pasta should be made with quality ingredients.

1. Prepare the seafood. You don’t have to thaw it before cooking. But since most seafood is farmed, it is worth putting it in a small pot, covering it with water and bringing it to a boil, but not boiling it. A thick foam will rise. Immediately drain the seafood in a colander and rinse it.

   Amazingly, after this treatment even the broth from such seafood, for a soup, turns out clear, rich and fragrant, and the seafood pasta is simply wonderful.

   

2. Cook the pasta. In a large pot bring 3 l of water to a boil, add 21 g of salt (7 g per 1 l of water) and 1 tsp of dried aromatic herbs. This herb mix is often sold in stores and called “Mediterranean herbs.” Add the pasta and cook for as long as the package says; that time gives you “al dente.” While the pasta cooks, make the sauce.

Sauce

3. Flavor the oil with garlic. Pour olive oil into a heated pan and, over medium heat, very quickly, literally 30 sec, fry peeled and crushed garlic cloves in it. The garlic lightly flavors the olive oil; then throw the cloves away.

   

4. Fry the onion until golden. Peel the onion, cut it into coarse strips and fry it in the fragrant olive oil until golden.

   

5. Make the base of the sauce. Add 1 tsp of wheat flour (3 g) to the onion and mix thoroughly.

   

   Fry the onion with the flour for about 1 min, then, stirring, add a little boiled water. You should get a sauce of medium thickness.

   

6. Season the sauce. Add whole olives and very finely chopped parsley and basil leaves. Salt to taste and add a little pepper. Squeeze 0.5 tsp of lime juice into the sauce. Lime juice brings out the flavor of the seafood and gives it a light shade of taste.

   

7. Add the seafood and take the sauce off the heat. Simmer the sauce over low heat for 2-3 min. Add the prepared seafood and simmer everything together for no more than 2 min.

   

   Then take the sauce off the heat and, covered with a lid, leave it until the pasta is cooked. It is important not to miss the moment and to turn off the heat in time; seafood doesn’t like heat treatment much and turns into tough rubber, especially squid and octopus.

   

Serving

8. Mix the pasta with the sauce. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and let the water run off. Mix the pasta with the seafood in the pan with the sauce.

   

9. Put the pasta with seafood on plates, garnished with lime slices and whole olives.

   

   Serve the seafood pasta with lime immediately, while it is still hot.