Seafood pasta is a fragrant and tasty first course that encapsulates the true flavors and aromas of the Mediterranean Sea. Spaghetti alla scoglio and its recipe are a timeless dish of traditional cuisine, particularly Neapolitan cuisine.
This dish enjoyed great success especially in the '80s and '90s. There was no seafood restaurant that didn't have this delight on its menu.
The combination of the sauce with seafood, shellfish, and mollusks is truly exquisite. In summer, enjoying this dish on a little terrace in the evening with friends or family creates something priceless.
However, pay attention to the ingredients: they all need to be extremely fresh if you want to follow the original recipe!
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Before telling you what type of pasta to use for your seafood dish, a curiosity. Do you know why it's called 'scoglio'? It's called so because, originally, it was made with pieces of rock sautéed in a pot from which the "little sea critters" were still alive. The dish was completed by removing the stones and finishing it all with pasta.
The result was nothing short of sublime: a dish that, with very few ingredients, captured all the flavors of the sea. And it is from the simplicity and freedom of this dish that all possible and imaginable reinterpretations have emerged, because there is no strict rule about the seafood to use. In fact, it was originally made with whatever was found.
As for the type of pasta to use, long pasta is usually preferred. Dominating are the spaghetti, followed by linguine and bavette. We recommend those produced by two pasta factories symbolizing Italian excellence: The Mulino di Gragnano and Pastificio Felicetti which you can both find on Spaghetti & Mandolino. Among short pasta, paccheri or calamarata are also very often used.
However, don't be too influenced by the type of pasta; what matters is that you enjoy it.
Let your imagination take over; the important thing is to use genuine products.
Mussels, shrimp, squid, prawns, clams: here's how to easily prepare a lip-smacking seafood pasta.
Ingredients for 4 people
320 g pasta (in this case, we recommend spaghetti),
4 shrimp,
4 prawns,
2 squids,
200 g clams,
200 g mussels,
one clove of garlic,
a glass of white wine,
several spoonfuls of tomato sauce,
chopped parsley, extra virgin olive oil, salt, fresh chili
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Clean the shrimp and prawns, removing the intestines and keeping the heads. Sauté the open heads in a little oil, deglaze with half the wine, and cover with cold water; let it cook for at least an hour. Strain and keep the seafood broth.
Chop the garlic, sauté it with a little oil, add the clams and mussels and let them open, adding the rest of the wine. Keep the cooking liquid, quickly sauté the cleaned shrimp, prawns, and squid cut into pieces.
Then add the tomato sauce, the cooking liquid from the clams and mussels, a little seafood broth, and let it cook for a few minutes.
Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water for the time indicated on the package, drain it, and finish cooking in the sauce, adding chopped fresh chili, parsley, clams, and mussels. A drizzle of oil to finish and you're done!
The recipe we described earlier is for seafood pasta, but there’s nothing stopping you from trying out alternative seafood sauces to create a beautiful seafood pasta dish. Shelled seafood and mollusks, from mussels and clams to shrimp, prawns, squid, cuttlefish, and more.
Then spaghetti alla scoglio can be red if the sauce ingredients also include tomatoes (fresh or canned), or white when only a little parsley is added to the seafood products. Let your imagination run wild and create your favorite seafood pasta dish!
Francesco Scuderi
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