Crab Linguine

This weekend Stew rustled up a delicious crab linguine for us both on Saturday evening, with chilli, garlic, parsley and mushrooms. I absolutely love crab and seafood pasta in general, so I was super excited to try this. Whilst he did the cooking, I whipped us up a tasty Aperol Spritz to wash everything down with. A very authentic Italian dinner!

Stew used fresh linguine for this recipe, but you could also used dried, you will just need to adjust the cooking times. We bought a tub of cooked white and brown crab meat from Tesco for £3.50, which I didn't think was too badly priced considering it made 4 portions. The tub did say it was only 1 portion, but I can't believe that. It may be meat from only 1 crab, but it's so rich in flavour I wouldn't personally want to eat the whole tub to myself. Plus with the addition of mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and courgettes in this dish, it was perfect to split between 4. Otherwise you could reduce the other ingredients in size, and share the tub between 2. It's completely up to you. You should be able to find crab meat in any large supermarket.

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 400g linguine (we used fresh)
• 1 large knob of butter
• 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 large brown onion, sliced
• 1 tub of cooked white and brown crab meat
• 5 tbsp white wine
• 2 large handfuls of cherry tomatoes
• 6 baby courgettes, cooked length ways
• 2 large handfuls of cup mushrooms, finely sliced
• 1 large handful of flat leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
• 1 lemon

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan on a medium heat and soften the onions, roughly 5 minutes.
2. Add the garlic, chilli and mushrooms.
3. At the same time heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a griddle pan, and add the courgettes and tomatoes.
4. Add the white wine and a generous squeeze of lemon juice to the mushrooms and onion pan. Stir well and allow to reduce, roughly 5 minutes.
5. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, add the linguine and follow packet instructions. If using fresh this only takes around 3 minutes. If using dried pasta, you will want to bring this to the boil sooner.
6. Once the pasta is cooked, use tongs to transfer straight into the mushroom and onion frying pan. Add the crab meat, two thirds of the parsley and another generous squeeze of lemon. Use the tongs to stir well and mix everything thoroughly.
7. Serve the crab linguine into a large bowl, season with the rest of the parsley sprinkled on top and some black pepper. Pour over the courgettes and tomatoes.