Crab Pasta

Heaven on a Plate!

Although I did not cook this last night I am going to share with you a recipe that I made a couple of weeks ago that is just too good not to share.

I haven't given it a name - at our house it just goes by the name of

Crab Pasta

2 x punnets of cherry or grape tomatoes
olive oil
butter
garlic
250ml white wine
300ml cream
basil - that has been shredded by cutting with scissors - a good half bunch is best.
Phillips "fresh" canned crab meat - 1 can
500g Maccheroni al Ferretto
Fresh grated parmesan to serve

Now this is incredibly easy, and very impressive - so if you are having guests or if there is someone you want to impress this is the recipe! The above quantities serve 4 - but unfortunately it doesn't seem to go that far in this house.

In a frypan gently heat a good splash of olive oil with approximately 50g of butter (no need to get too technical). Once the butter has melted and it is starting to foam add in the two punnets of cherry tomatoes and a good generous amount of chopped garlic (I always used the bottled type and just pour it in - really can you ever have too much garlic in a pasta dish??)

Gently saute the tomatoes until their skin starts to split. Once the skin starts splitting gently crush the tomatoes with the back of a spoon to release all their wonderful juices. To this I want you to add a good 250ml of white wine - more or less, depends on how juicy the tomatoes are. Now gently cook this concoction down until you have a beautiful syrupy sauce.

At this time bring your pan of water to the boil for the pasta. Leave this just sitting until you are ready for it. The sauce will take a good 20-25 minutes to reduce down - be patient. Once you can see that the sauce is reducing put your pasta on to cook. Good Italian pasta takes a little longer to cook so make sure you give yourself a good 15 minutes to cook the pasta. So rule of thumb is to add the pasta to the boiling water after the sauce has been cooking for about 10 minutes.

Back to the sauce. When the pasta is cooked drain it - but not so much that all the cooking water is gone - it is ok if there is still a little in the folds of the pasta, this will make your sauce go a little further! Place it back into the saucepan.

To the sauce add the crab meat, a good generous amount of cracked black pepper and the cream (I use the light cooking cream). Give it a gentle stir, taking care not to break up the crabmeat too much. Heat through. Once it has heated through add the shredded basil. Now add this sauce to the pot of pasta.

Ladle out into bowls and top with grated parmesan cheese.

I can taste it now, heaven!!!

TIPS: Dear reader let me tell you a little tip that I picked up several years ago. I use it all the time when chopping up herbs. Using scissors will give you a lovely uniform shredded shape to your herbs - in particular basil, and kaffir lime leaves. When you chop basil on a chopping board the basil oxidises and goes a dark colour - using scissors means the basil stays lovely and green.

The Machceroni al Ferretto I have used is a beautiful authentic Italian style pasta that holds this rich delectable sauce so beautifully. You will find it in the Gourmet section of your supermarket. See the picture above. If you cannot find this pasta just use one that will hold onto all the lovely sauce.

The Philips Crab will be found in the refrigerated section of the supermarket where you find smoked salmon etc. It is technically a can - but it is "fresh" crab meat.