Seafood Spaghetti or Spaghetti ai Frutti di Mare: A Step-by-Step Guide

My family's favourite spaghetti dish has always prompts everyone to exclaim: “This is so good. Delicious, Mum!” With just one bite, our minds drift to those locations with emerald seas and golden beaches, where we use to savour this dish at its best: my homeland Sardinia. So, let your refined palate indulge and start dreaming!

Now, let me share something more practical for students or young individuals with limited time and budget! While fresh seafood from the fishmonger will enhance the flavour of this Seafood Spaghetti dish, it can be costly. There's a solution: it can be made with frozen seafood (forgive me, purists). Some top UK supermarkets offer excellent options, and when you're short on time but crave seafood, this is a great choice since you only need to add it to the pan!

Seafood Spaghetti or spaghetti ai frutti di mare

Good to know

Seafood in English and frutti di mare in Italian: same thing, different linguistic ways of describing it. And different thinking indeed! The English language came up with a practical word: seafood, which is pretty much straightforward in concept: the food of the sea, it grows in the sea, it's part of the Animalia Kingdom and therefore part of the food chain. The Italian language thinks in a different way, in a sort of charming way, showing appreciation for the productivity of the sea: frutti di mare = fruits of the sea. It's like describing 'the labour' that the sea has in producing such delicacies, just like a tree produces, with long and hard work, its sweet and juicy fruits.

Ingredients serves 4

• Spaghetti no. 3 or no. 5, 500 g

• Vongole (small clams), 200 g

• Mussels, 200 g

• Tiger prawns or red prawns, 200 g

• Squids, 2

• Scallops, cut in half, 200 g

• Tomatoes on the branch, chopped, 2 or 3

• Dried peperoncino chili, crushed, 2

• Parsley, chopped, 2 tbsp

• Garlic cloves, crushed, 2

• White wine, 1 glass

• Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp

• Salt and pepper

Let’s jump to the method

1. Get ready all ingredients.

2. To clean the clams and get rid of the sand inside, rinse and put them in a sea-salted cold water container. Let them purge for 6 hours or more. Scrub them with a food brush. Rinse again and set aside.

3. Do as in point 2 for the mussels too. Then, clean the shells one by one, scrubbing them with a knife or with a brush for food to get rid of the surface impurities and the build up of sea shelves. Pull out the cord trapped between the two shells. Rinse again and set aside.

4. Wash the prawns and the squids. Clean the squids completely of their interiors.

5. Cut the squids into rounds and each round in half.

6. Halve the scallops too.

7. Put the mussels and the clams in different pots to start cooking once they’re ready and clean. Cover the pots and, without water, let both mussels and clams open. It will take roughly 5 minutes. Throw away the ones that don’t open. Discard 3/4 of the shells and set aside the mollusks: with the remaining ones, you will decorate the dish at the end. Some water will form from them while cooking: filter it and keep it for later.

8. In a wide pan, sauté the prawns in olive oil. Then, sauté the scallops. Set all aside.

9. In the same pan, add 2 more tbsp of olive oil, warm it up and add the crushed garlic.

10. Take out the garlic, then add to the pan all of the seafood you have prepared.

11. Add the chopped tomatoes, the chopped parsley, the filtered water from the clams and mussels, a glass of white wine, the crushed peperoncino chilli, salt, and pepper to your taste. Let the wine alcohol evaporate. Remember: you can still add salt at any time, so don’t overdo it to start with.

12. Half cover with a lid and cook for 10 minutes at low heat.

13. Get ready a pot of water big enough for 500 g of spaghetti and bring to a boil. Ideally, for every 100 g of pasta you should use 1 litre of water and 10 g of salt for each litre.

14. When boiling, add the salt and the pasta. Follow the cooking time instructions written on the package of the pasta. Don’t forget that the best pasta should be “a lenta essicazione,” meaning slow drying when produced, which should be written on the package.

15. Once ready, transfer the pasta into a capacious serving bowl, add the seafood and all its juices and, if needed, some water from the pasta.

16. Decorate with the shells you set aside.

17. Serve and… buon appetito with Seafood Spaghetti or Spaghetti ai frutti di mare!