Paleo eating has knocked traditional linguine out and a reasonable replacement can be found in juliennes of courgette or carrot ... but ... I think I've found a perfect linguine now.
Last week, while nosing around a Polski Sklep (Polish food store) near work for some roasted red peppers, I happened upon a jar of what looked like noodles.
The best I could get out of the shopkeeper at the time was that it was celeriac. Upon returning to work and translating the ingredients, it was, indeed, celeriac, in salt, vinegar and ... sugar.
Gah! No drama - simply soak in water for an hour and we're good to go.
So, this evening, I set about making up a small portion of Crab Linguine as a starter ... the main yet to be thought through. I tend to think on the fly as I cook and have little to no idea what will end up on the plate - it just happens. As it happens, the starter simply got bulked out and combined with the bare bones of the main course to make a single larger meal. We had cheesecake in the fridge for dessert.
You need a can of crab meat or a couple of dressed crabs. Something like 250g of meat for two. Of course, dressed or undressed crabs would be perfect, but canned is so much more accessible. Chillies, several, since this dish curiously can take a lot ... well diced. Linguine; be it juliennes of veg or these curious noodles of celeriac.
Having already used half of the jar, I had to bulk out with courgette, which I made ribbons.
To cook, it's simply a case of softening some of your favourite paleo fat in a large frying pan, warming the veg through, shredding the crab meat over and adding in the chillies. Squeeze of lime before serving and some fresh herbs, be it flat leaf parsley, coriander of here, dill.
It takes a couple of minutes, in reality, so I left that part of the meal until the end ...
The remainder of our dinner here was a half thought-through main course of cod steak over griddled watermelon with some garlic crushed potatoes for the Mrs, leftover curried rice for me ... over samphire.
The Crab Linguine made a perfect centre piece.
The cod was simply parcel baked in the oven for 20 minutes with a little butter while the potatoes cooked through, garlic added and the buttery sauce from the cod to wet it up. Crush with a fork. My rice was just fried through in goose fat. Samphire needs no more than a couple of minutes immersed in hot water while the Crab Linguine was cooked through.
Serve out in an appealing manner ... superfluous greenage over; pea shoots in my case.
I really do need to get myself one of these ...
