Seafood Fra Diavolo with Linguine
BRO. A girl is coming over for dinner and you need to make something delicious. But there’s not much time! Don’t worry, stop at the fish market on your way home from work GTL and you can pull together a super simple yet elegant and impressive meal in less than half an hour! Fra diavolo is usually made with lots of tomatoes and crushed pepper flakes, but this version uses sriracha and banana peppers to bring the spice and stays light on the tomato to not drown out the delicious mussel “juice”. And I think you know a thing or two about muscle juice.
Step 1: Find some girls to invite over. This is usually the hardest step for me.
Step 2: Fry up all the seafood in separate batches. Shrimp first, then scallops. This is important to do separate so everything gets cooked perfectly. Seafood generally has short and precise cooking times, but as long as you pay attention and cook on high heats for short amounts of time you will be fine.
Step 3: Deglaze. The scallops leave a residue on the pan. A delicious residue that would be perfect to cook mussels in. Hit the pan with some white wine and scrape to get the brown stuff into your sauce.
Step 4: The mussels. They have a built in thermometer. They open when they are done cooking. It’s THAT simple.
Step 5: Finish the sauce. Banana peppers, sriracha, and tomatoes to make this pasta earn the title fra diavolo.
Step 6: bring it all together. The pasta should be finished jsut as the mussels are done, then toss everything together immediately. This will allow the pasta to really absorb the mussel flavor.
Whoa more girls?
We ate this pasta on a night on the cape and it really hit the spot. The seafood was super fresh from a small market down the street and all the flavors just complimented it and not overpowered. And it definitely had a kick to it! The banana peppers really added a unique dimension to fra diavolo.
Mussels are only a recent love of mine, but lately I just cant get enough.
Very impressive, very easy dish, and wasn’t to heavy for your date night. Based on this picture though, it looks kinda dry, but it wasn’t dry at all.
Serves 4 or 5. You can half it if you want for date night, or come back and eat more late night, and then kill it off in the morning (like I did)
Seafood Fra Diavolo with Linguine
Ingredients
- 1 Pound Linguine
- 14 Ounces Canned Diced Tomato
- 6 Ounces Chopped Banana Peppers juice and all
- 2 Tablespoons Sriracha
- 1 Cup White Wine
- 24 Mussels
- 24 Bay Scallops
- 18 Small Shrimp peeled and deveined
- 1 Handful Chopped Parsley
Instructions
- Bring some salted water to a boil
- Rinse the seafood. Ideally you will get the shrimp already cleaned for you, because if you don’t it’s gonna take some time and effort to do that part yourself. Make sure the “beard” is removed from the scallops (it’s kinda like a weird flap that is tough and can harbour sand) and all the barnacle matter is scrubbed off the mussels. Once the seafood is prepped you are halfway there!
- On high heat with some olive oil, cook the shrimp (with salt)for only about 2 minutes total, flipping and stirring often. remove from pan, add more olive oil if needed, and add your scallops(and salt). Bay scallops don’t really need the attention of searing each side the way that larger scallops do, just toss em in there and cook at a really high temp to get some browning. Remove from the pan when they are totally opaque, only about 3 minutes or so.
- You will notice the bottom of the pan has lots of brown stuff stuck to it at this point. Pour in your wine with the pan still really hot and scrape at the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to free all the browned bits. That’s flavor right there!
- Now that you have a second as this comes to a simmer, drop your pasta and it will be ready at the perfect time.
- Now add in your mussels to the wine and simmer until they all open up. Should only be a few minutes. Toss out any that don’t open because they were dead when you bought them and you do not want to eat them!
- Once they are all open, add the tomatoes, sriracha, and banana peppers(you may want more or less of these ingredients based on your preference). Bring to a quick simmer and kill the heat.
- Is your pasta ready? Strain and place in a large pasta bowl. Pour all the seafood over the pasta and top with some parsley. Toss to coat everything and let the spicy mussel sauce really absorb into the noodles. Serve with a salad!
Looks like a perfect dish for a date night! I think someone at my house is about to get spoiled. YUM!
This was sooooo delicious! Thanks Dan 🙂