Another seafood pasta, this time made by Princess Lottie and Wayne. This dish is to die for. Each element of the dish was cooked separately, starting with the mussels.
The mussels gently steam open to reveal their delicious contents….
..and are devoured with relish! For a similar recipe try:
Linguine con cozze di nonno (Grandad’s Mussel Linguine)
from Jamie Olivers book “Jamie’s Italy”.Nonno Contaldo is my mentor Gennaro’s dad, but as far as Nonno is concerned, he thinks I’m his grandson. (You can make of that what you will). His favourite thing to cook for himself is mussels with pasta, so I’m going to talk you through the recipe as he explained it to me.
Nonno gets his pan of salted water on to boil. If he has visitors he’ll ask them to go down to the sea to get some water as this give the dish a real authentic taste. He pours a few drizzles of extra virgin olive oil into a separate little pan and puts it on a medium heat. He adds a diced clove of garlic, a tiny amount of crumbled dried chilli (not too much) and an anchovy fillet. Then 6 ripe cherry tomatoes, halved and squeezed into the pan as the garlic begins to fry. At this point Nonno adds 55gr / 2oz of linguine to the boiling water but I would suggest using 100gr / 3 1/2oz. At no point should the garlic take on any colour, but you need the heat to be hot enough to melt the anchovies. The juice from the tomatoes and oil will make a light, very delicate and simple sauce. Now add a good handful of washed and debearded mussels in the pan. Nonno can taste the difference between bought mussels and wild ones, so he sent me down to the beach to pick some. They were slightly smaller, but he was right, the flavour that came out of them was worth so much more than having a bigger chunk of meat. Give the pan a little toss, then place a lid on top and cook until all the mussels are open. Add a handful of chopped parsley to the pan.
