Saturday, January 21, 2012

Penne Pasta With Crab Meat

I am not very good in giving names to my dishes. This task I usually assign to my hubby who comes up with catchy sobriquets to call someone's attention to a very simple concoction. After all, we first buy names before setting our tongue on it. So a good name is mandatory to attract people towards your culinary creations. However, the recipe that I am going to describe now does not require any strikingly bombastic name as the dish itself cooked with mellow crab meat infused with the flavours of assorted vegetables and some exquisite spices make it one of a kind.

Truly enjoyable, the crab mixture goes so well with the pasta that it will leave you licking your fingers.




Ingredients:                                     Cooking time: 45 minutes
For the crab mixture:
ü  150 gm of crab meat (chopped)
ü  75 gm of cabbage (julienned)
ü  1 medium sized carrot (julienned)
ü  1 medium sized onion (chopped)
ü  1 red bell pepper (chopped)
ü  Few sprigs of coriander leaves (chopped)
ü  1 tbsp of parsley leaves (chopped)
ü  2 garlic cloves (chopped)
ü  2-3 jalapeno peppers (chopped)
ü  2 tbsp of mayonnaise
ü  1 tsp black pepper powder
ü  1 tsp paprika powder
ü  Salt to taste
For Pasta:
ü  300 gm penne pasta (boiled and drained)
ü  2 large tomatoes (turned into puree)
ü  1/2 cup of yogurt (50 ml)
ü  1 tsp black pepper powder
ü  2-3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
ü  Salt to taste
ü  White oil for cooking
Method:
Crab Mixture:
1) Heat oil in a pan. Toss in the garlic pieces and brown. Then shallow fry the vegetables one by one - cabbage, carrot, bell pepper and onion.
2) Add crab meat, coriander and parsley leaves. When the greens begin to wilt, add jalapeno peppers and mayonnaise. (I have used the frozen crab meat which is already boiled. Hence I don't need to do anything extra for the crab meat to get cooked.)
3) Finally sprinkle black pepper powder, paprika and salt and stir in to mix properly. Turn off the heat.

Penne Pasta:
1) Heat oil in a pan. Add chopped garlic. When garlic turns golden brown in color, add tomato puree. Add yogurt when puree begins to bubble away.
2) Add pasta, black pepper powder and salt. (Since you have already added salt to the crab mixture, be careful of over salting.)
3) Now add the crab mixture and stir well to mix all the ingredients properly. Serve hot.



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