Seafood Pasta

Now here's something that actually turned out well. Seafood pasta. I'm a bit squeamish about buying seafood at the wet market, so I was happy to find frozen packages of assorted seafood (mostly tentacles) at the local supermarket. This gave me a chance to use some fresh leaves from the basil and thyme plants on my front porch that have so far miraculously survived in spite of my abuse.

Basil, thyme, parsley, garlic, and shallots, fried in lots of olive oil. Add the seafood, some mushrooms, and then some diced tomatoes (you don't want these to get too cooked), and you get a lovely broth to toss with your pasta. Add salt and pepper, a dash of maggi sauce (really!), and a heavy sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

This has turned out to be one of my best dishes. It's kind of hard to find a good pasta in Hong Kong restaurants at a reasonable price. It's either some sugary mush topped with mashed potatoes, bland, or slathered in something strange like XO sauce and cornstarch. And at unreasonable prices you generally get a little mound of pasta in the middle of a very big and empty plate. So now I've figured out how to make this at home, and in large quantities, I'm very happy.