Espaguetis Con Mariscos

When perusing a Spanish menu it’s common to see rice dishes such as Paella Valenciana and Paella de Marisco but you don’t tend to see much in the way of pasta dishes. Restaurants in the Valencia region serve Fideuà which is a type of paella cooked with pasta noodles but Italian-style pastas are consumed more in the Spanish home than the Spanish restaurant.

One exception is this seafood spaghetti dish which is the Spanish equivalent of the classic Italian favourite ‘Spaghetti Frutti di Mare’. With the abundance of seafood available from Galicia on the Atlantic coast of Spain there are numerous versions of this recipe produced by chefs around the country.

Please feel free to change the quantities or even the ingredients to suit your liking. I choose to keep the mussels, clams and a few of the prawns in their shells as I think it makes the dish look great but does make it a little messy to eat. You can remove the mussels and clams from their shells after cooking if you prefer to do so.

Ingredients

Serves 4 people

• 400g of spaghetti
• 12 mussels
• 300g clams
• 250g squid rings (calamares)
• 500g prawns
• 2 large tomatoes chopped into chunks
• 2 cloves garlic thinly sliced
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• fresh parsley (optional)
• a little sugar (optional)

Cooking Method

Start by cleaning and preparing all of the seafood.

To clean the mussels remove the beards and clean the outside of the shells – some people like to scrape the shells to get them spotless but I don’t think you need to go to overboard. Throw out any that are broken or that don’t close when you touch them. 
Set aside 4 or 8 prawns and shell the rest keeping the heads and shells for making stock.
Cut the squid into rings if not already prepared.
Wash the clams and discard any that have a broken shell or are open. Soak them in cold salty water for up to 1 hour to get rid of any sand inside them.

Put about 300ml of boiling water in a pan on a medium heat, add the prawn heads and shells and simmer gently for 5 or 10 minutes. Remove the heads and shells and discard them. Now add the mussels and the clams and cover. After a few minutes they should have opened. Remove them and set them aside.

Meanwhile, put about half of the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Fry the shelled prawns for about 1 minute until they change colour. Remove them and set aside. Fry the ones still in their shells for a minute or two on each side and then remove them and put them with the others.

Now fry the squid rings in the same pan for a couple of minutes. Again remove them and set aside. Put any liquid that came out of the squid into the stock.

Add the rest of the oil to the frying pan and fry the thinly sliced garlic until it goes golden. Add the chopped tomatoes and the sugar if required, personally I don’t think it is necessary but some people like their sauce to be a little sweet, and cook for a few minutes.

Add a little parsley, all of the seafood and some of the seafood stock and cook till the tomatoes reduce. You can add more stock if you want to have a more liquidy dish.

Meanwhile cook the spaghetti following the instructions on the packet.

To serve, put the spaghetti in bowls and then put the seafood on top.

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