Seafood spaghetti is one of those dishes that unless eaten in temperatures above 25 degrees, just makes you miss summer. This one comes from Mattio Rossi, head chef at Sotto Sopra. Serving old-school trattoria fare, it’s a street back from the Newport Beach and everything is made in-house. The recipe below has a few more steps than you’d expect from a simple spaghetti dish, but it’s worth it for the depth of flavour.
Spaghetti with mussels
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1kg of fresh mussels
Olive oil
½ litres of water
150ml of white wine
Take a large pot, put it on high heat and wait until it’s really hot. Drop the mussels and the olive oil in, wait until they heat up and add the white wine.
Cover with a lid and wait around three minutes, checking at intervals until every mussel is open. Strain the liquid into a separate bowl and mix in the water.
Keep 100g of open mussels aside for making mussel cream.
Mussel cream
200g of prepared mussel water (see above)
100g open mussels (see above)
Heat mussel water to 60 degrees. Add mussels and leave to simmer for 10 minutes (do not allow to boil).
Blend and strain.
Spaghetti
20g diced green capsicum
5g of chilli and garlic, blended together
10g frigitelli peppers, julienned
30ml white wine
200ml mussel water
100g Mancini spaghetti
20ml mussel cream
10g cherry tomato, diced
10g parsley, finely chopped
Lemon zest
Olive oil
In a pot, cook spaghetti in salted water for four minutes.
In the meantime, in a pan add olive oil, green capsicum, peppers and garlic and chilli blend. Add white wine and let it evaporate. When all the alcohol has evaporated, add mussel water. Strain cooked spaghetti and add to pan.
To plate up, put the mussel cream on the bottom, then add the spaghetti, and to finish, top with the pepper mixture, cherry tomatoes, parsley, lemon zest and a dash of olive oil.
Buon appetito!
