Fresh Seafood with Pasta and Chermoula

Nothing for me is more evocative of the Mediterranean than a big sharing platter of seafood. It looks, tastes and smells of summer and while often prohibitively expensive in a restaurant, it is something you can easily make at home. It looks impressive yet it is actually quite effortless to put together and  I think it is the perfect summer meal. Close your eyes, breathe it in, and imagine yourself on the shores of a sun drenched beach. All the flavours of the sea are there.

 

 

The final cooking stage and assembling of this dish takes less than 10 mins – 6 for the pasta and 3 or 4 for the seafood. If you clean your seafood, prepare the sauce in advance. The rest is a breeze. A sea breeze!

 

The chermoula is something I have blogged about before – though maybe under a different name with slightly different proportions – *chermoula or schug. Any of these versions will work. I try to have little pots of things like this in my fridge all the time because they add so much to so many different meals and yet take no time at all to make. 

Fresh seafood with pasta and chermoula

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

500g dry fettuccine or tagliatelle  
About 3 tbsp olive oil
25g  butter
1 red chilli, finely diced
3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
4 squid tubes, cut into 1/2cm rings (300g net)
500g mussels, beards removed (Discard any that are open and don’t want to close. This is important)
360g large prawns, peeled, de-veined but with the head and tail left on
4 tomatoes, quartered, seeds discarded and diced into 1cm pieces 
Parsley, roughly chopped
4 to 6 lemon wedges
Salt and black pepper

Chermoula

2 green chilies, roughly chopped

Handful of cilantro (coriander leaves)

Half handful of flat leaf parsley

1 tsp ground coriander

I tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp  crushed cardamom seeds

zest of lemon 

1/4 tsp caster sugar

olive oil

salt

 

Method

 

• First make the sauce. Simply whizz up the ingredients with a handheld blender till it looks like pesto. Set aside
• Once you are ready to cook, boil a pan of salted water, add the pasta and cook for the required time till al dente- probably 6-7 minutes. If it’s ready before the seafood, rinse, add a little olive oil and set aside.
• Meanwhile, take a large heavy bottomed skillet which has a lid and heat the olive oil and butter. Add the crushed garlic and red chilli. Cook for a few minutes but don’t let it burn. Once it starts changing colour add a few tablespoons of water to cut the heat then throw in the seafood, lower the heat and cover. The seafood itself, especially the mussels, will release a lot of liquid  – and flavour – for it all to cook in. After about 3 minutes, the mussels will open, the prawns will be pink and be firm to the touch and the squid will be cooked.  

• Turn off the heat. Stir in the parsley,  tomato and a few spoonfuls of chermoula. Add another drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper and mix. 

 

Put the pasta onto a serving dish, pour the seafood and any liquid on top and mix.  Drizzle the remaining chermoula over all and serve with lemon wedges

Serve immediately – unless of course you can’t resist the temptation to take some photos first!