Crab fettuccinne

Not everything in life turns out according to plan, and cookery is no exception.  Tonight's dinner was edible, and probably even quite nice if you like that sort of thing, but it was not at all what I'd intended.

We're very lucky to have a monthly farmers' market here, where one of the most popular stalls is the fisherman who sells his own catch.  We were a bit late getting there this month and he'd sold out of the gurnard and red mullet that I really wanted, but he did have plenty of crab left.  I love shellfish and crab is no exception so I grabbed a pack of mixed brown and white crabmeat.    He had packs of just white meat, for a bit more money, but I don't understand the price difference between white and brown crabmeat - they're both delicious.

My plan was to do something really simple to allow the flavour of crab come through, with just a little chilli kick to help it on its way.  Ready to go with the plan?  Here goes.

Chop up some spring onions and a chilli pepper, and crush and/or finely chop a clove of garlic.  These days I generally crush garlic under a knife blade using the heel of my hand then chop the remains up as finely as I can, but feel free to use a garlic press or a pestle-and-mortar if you want.

Heat some oil in a pan over a medium heat and chuck it all in.  Not too hot and not too long because we just want to soften it all up, no brown bits.  Once that's done, add the crab.

I used the Le Creuset today, an unusually expensive piece of kit for me but it was a gift from an uncommonly generous person.  Use whichever pan you like - what you really want is a non-stick surface and enough volume to fit everything in.  I also own a wok that I paid about £3.99 for ten years ago and that would have done the job just as well.

Whichever vessel you've chosen, move everything around a bit, mix it all up, then add a glass of white wine.  Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer.

Timings get slightly complicated here.  We'll say the crab's ready when almost all the wine has evaporated.  This will take 10 minutes or less.

You need your pasta to be ready at the same time.  I used fresh fettuccinne (which has, in fact, been in the freezer for a little while) but feel free to use that, linguine, tagliatelle, spaghetti...  oh sod it, I'm not Jamie Oliver, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape over pasta.  It's a brilliant ingredient but you can use whatever shape you fancy and there is absolutely nothing wrong with dried pasta.  Having said all that, though, I have had some very unpleasant cheap pasta which went really powdery and weird when cooked so if you find a brand of pasta that you don't like, vote with your wallet and don't buy it again.  There is a limit to economical cooking and the value brands often go past it.

 

Where was I?  Oh yes.  Pasta needs to be ready when the wine has nearly all evaporated.  At that point, drain the pasta, chuck it in the pan with the crab and mix it all about so that the pasta gets coated with those lovely flavours for a minute.

Serve and enjoy, drinking the rest of that bottle of white wine as you go.  If you have a coriander plant, serve it with a couple of coriander leaves sitting on top.  I don't at the moment, obviously.

So what went wrong?  Those sodding, evil, fickle, irritating bloody chilli peppers, that's what went wrong!

I wanted a little bit of a chilli kick, just to highlight the flavours.  My girlfriend had bought a packet of chilli peppers (labelled medium hot) from the supermarket to make stir-fry one evening last week when I was out, and her stir-fry had turned out quite mild so on her advice I just chopped up another pepper from the same packet.

It turned out to be the hottest thing either of us had ever willingly eaten.  At the end we were both red-faced and sweating, and we'd both picked out the pieces of pepper.  Please don't think we're spice wimps - we both love spicy food.  Plus, don't forget, my girlfriend has already made something with another pepper out of the same packet which she described as mild.  The lovely crab flavour was completely lost behind burning heat.

No other ingredient does this.  Supermarkets display behaviours which would normally be described as Obsessive Compulsive in the pursuit of consistency.  Supermarkets want, more than anything, that you get the same result from the same product every single time you buy it.  That's why bent bananas get binned, not some fictional EU directive.

So why the hell are they failing so spectacularly with chilli peppers?  I blame the fickle fruit, not the store.

Having had my rant, I can only remember two occasions when chilli-based cooking has gone so badly wrong before.  Once about seven years ago when I was cooking for myself and it came out so hot I actually thought I was having a severe allergic reaction and was on the point of calling 999, and another quite recently when I served chilli-con-carne for a group of guests with two chilli peppers and no heat at all.

Learn from my mistakes: don't trust the label but test every chilli pepper you use by tasting a small piece raw when you're slicing it up.  If it's too hot, scrape the seeds out and just use the flesh.  Taste that and if it's still too hot, use a different pepper.

There is a simple way out of this dilemma - forego the fresh, use chilli powder or flakes and measure quantities for heat.  Once you get to know a particular brand of dried chilli they will be consistent and you will be able to measure accurately for heat.  But something in me just likes using fresh ingredients and I'm not willing to give up fresh chilli peppers just yet.  Three abject failures in 14 years of cooking for myself can't be that bad, can it?  They're bloody memorable failures though.

I offer no excuses for the varying heat in the quality of photography for today's blog, mind you...

Taste verdict
A dish intended to show off the flavour of fresh crab with a little chilli kick, hijacked by an insane extremist rogue chilli pepper.  Sorry.  A schoolboy error which never would have left a restaurant kitchen, but we're home cooks here and we learn from our mistakes.


Financial verdict
This blog is about value in cooking, which is not the same as cheapness.  I suspect this is always going to stand as one of the more expensive recipes on the blog, but if you're really counting the pennies may I suggest a tin of fish (tuna, salmon, sardines) instead of the freshly-landed crab?

3 spring onions - 30p
1 rogue chilli pepper - 20p
190g mixed crab meat - £3.50
Glass of wine - £1
Clove of garlic, 100g pasta - pennies, from store


£2.50 per portion.  The crab was an indulgence, but worth it as a payday treat.  With tinned fish and dry pasta instead of their fresh equivalents this would be a satisfying and ludicrously cheap dinner.

The Skinny
Chop three or four spring onions and and one chilli pepper.  Adjust chilli pepper for heat by scraping out seeds if necessary.  Replace chilli pepper with chilli powder or flakes if you want to.

Crush and/or chop one clove of garlic into tiny pieces.

Heat oil in a large non-stick pan and add all the above.

Cook over a medium heat until soft, not burny-brown.

Add the crab (or tinned fish).

Mix everything up.

Add a glass of wine.

Bring to the boil, then back off the heat to a gentle simmer.

While all this is going on, cook your pasta.  Have the pasta ready when the wine has nearly all evaporated.  This will take about seven to ten minutes - use the instructions on the pasta packet and some maths to arrange this.

Drain the pasta, chuck it into the main pan and mix it around so that it picks up the flavours.

Serve, with a garnish of coriander leaves if you want to be cheffy and you have a coriander plant.

This should give you a nice, simple plate of food that showcases the flavour of crab with a background show of onion, garlic and a little hit of chilli but may instead offer you a mouth full of flamethrower.

WeightWatchers ProPoints
5