The following recipe is made of my love of seafood and creamy sauce. Although the recipe is cream sauce based, the taste is very simple and clean with full of ocean flavor. I added saffron to make the color pretty. I think the black color from mussel and yellow from saffron contrast each other, making the dish look much better.
Seafood Linguine with Saffron Sauce
(Yield: 4 servings / Cooking time: one hour)
Ingredients:
+ linguine for four portions
+ 1 or 2 calamari, cut into thin rings
+ 8 cleaned clams (two for each)*
+ 8 cleaned mussels (two for each)*
+ 8 cleaned shrimps (two for each)
+ 4 large dry scallops** (one for each) ---> if the scallop is small, please use two for each.
+ 250ml dry white wine
+ full pinch of saffron***
+ 3 Tbsp heavy cream
+ 1 shallot, brunois
+ 2 cloves of garlic (two crushed and one sliced very thinly)
+ a few spring of thyme
+ chopped fresh parsley
+ unsalted butter
+ salt / pepper
* How to disgorge your shellfish - Soak your shellfishes in heavily salted water(salt : water = at least 1cup : 3quarts) for 30min (at least) to a few hours in a refrigerator. Discard the water and any sands and put the shellfishes under running water for 15 minutes before use.
** You should see a label if the scallops are "dry" or "wet" from seafood market. Wet scallops are soaked in liquid solution which make the scallops weigh more and gives more shelf time. This liquid soaked scallops are hard to sear due to the high water contents. Bottom line: always buy dry scallops if available.
*** Saffron is known as the "most expensive" herb per pound. It is true but you don't need that much of saffron anyhow for cooking. Too much of saffron can harm other flavors.
Procedures:
1. Add saffron to heavy cream and leave it in room temperature. Heavy cream will be infused with the color and flavor from saffron.
 |  |
| Right after adding the saffron | Heavy cream infused with saffron. You can see the color turn yellow |
2. Prepare garlic (crushed), shallot (brunois), thyme and butter.
3. Clean the mussels. A mussel has "beard" which was a part attached to the surface of rocks. Pinch the beard with a dry cloth and pull out. (you can do this with bare hands, but the beard will be slippery and it is easier if you use dry cloth.) Because a mussel is dying after the beard is removed, please make sure to remove the beard when you ready to cook mussel.
4. In a pot, sweat shallot with butter and add two cloves of crushed garlic little later and sweat together.
5. Add clams, mussels and a few spring of thyme and pour 250ml of white wine.
6. Cover the pot and cook until the clams and mussels open the mouths. As soon as the clams and mussels open the mouths, take those out from the pot. Usually mussels cooks first. Please take out mussels first then clams.
7. Strain the liquid from the pot and reduce the liquid to 1/3. When the liquid is reduced enough, turn off the heat and keep it warm.
8. In a separate big pot, boil water and add enough salt when the water start boiling. this water is to cook linguine.
9. While you are waiting for the water to boil, let's sear the scallops. First, clean the scallops - sometimes, a small whiter muscle can be found near the edge of a scallop. Remove the muscle carefully.
After cleaning the scallops, make sure the scallops are dried... patted in paper towel lightly. Season the scallops with salt and pepper. Make sure the pan is hot and you have enough oil in the pan. Brown each side of a scallop until it caramelized in dark brown. Drain the excess oil over wired rack, and keep it warm by loosely covering it with aluminum foil. When scallops are perfectly cooked, the center of scallops are warm and turn from translucent to opaque color. If you overcook scallops, they are rubbery and loose the plump texture.
10. Add linguine to the boiling water and cook until little bit under cooked. Usually, most of pasta box or package has instruction about the cooking time.
11. While you are waiting for the pasta to be cooked, cook calamari and shrimps. Season calamari and shrimps with salt (lightly) and pepper. Clean the fry pan that you used to sear scallops with paper towel and add new oil and saute prepared calamari and shrimp. Calamari and shrimp cook really quickly, please be careful not to overcook, otherwise the texture will be rubbery.
Cleaned shrimps and calamari
12. Reheat the reduced clam/mussel jus from #7. Add little bit under cooked linguine to it and cook through to infuse the clam/mussel flavor to linguine. Add saffron infused heavy cream when the linguine is almost cooked by passing through strainer to make sure the saffrons are not added to the sauce.
13. Toss cooked linguine with clams, mussels, shrimp and calamari. Make sure the seafood is reheated properly and warm.
14. Place into a pasta bowl, and garnish with seared scallops and sprinkle chopped fresh parsley.
Enjoy~!
Excellent photograph!
ReplyDelete