- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4-6 1x
Ingredients
- 1 pound spaghetti (or linguine)
- 1 pound crawfish, after shelling
- 1 pound cherry tomatoes
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped
- Salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
Which wine do
I pair with this recipe?
Check out our wine pairings to complement this recipe!
Find OutInstructions
- Bring a large pot of water to boil for the pasta.
- If the crawfish are not cooked, boil them, and then clean and peel them. Set aside.
- In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and sauté the garlic until golden. Cut the tomatoes into halves, and add them to the skillet. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until some of their juices evaporate. Mix in the crawfish and add salt and pepper to taste. Add the white wine cook, and then the parsley. Cook the combined ingredients over medium heat for about five additional minutes.
- Cook the pasta until just shy of al dente. Drain the pasta and add it to the crawfish Cook together for one minute. Serve immediately, with a sprinkle of fresh parsley.
Ed's Review
The Italians have wisely distilled three millenia of civilization down into two basic tenets: 1) trust no one, and 2) eat locally. Or put another way, who needs a government as long as the food is good? Ironically, their food is so good precisely because they trust no one. They want to know the who, what, how, where, and why about what they eat.
Americans have adopted the opposite approach: trust everyone and eat anything. This has resulted in big food companies and a complicit FDA, which have kindly provided us with the following: preservatives, pesticides, hormones, and my new personal favorite, genetically modified foods. (With friends like this, who needs enemies?)
Obviously, I favor the Italian approach to food. Trust no one; eat local. I'm in New Orleans today, and so we're eating fresh, local crawfish (crayfish), which are in season. Louisiana produces and consumes almost all of the U.S. supply of these tiny, fresh water crustaceans, meaning that frozen crawfish found in stores outside of Louisiana are generally Chinese imports. Trust that!
In Italy, crawfish can be found in mountain streams and rivers, but are not widely popular. They are often mistakenly referred to as aragosta (lobster) or shrimp (gambero), but they are correctly called any one of the following: gambero di fiume, gambero d'acqua dolce, gambero turco, or gambero di Galizia.
Because there are hundreds of crawfish species around the world, I doubt that you'll find these "red swamp crawfish" at your local market, so find a fresh local substitute. That said, and I'll admit it, the pasta was imported from Naples and the olive oil from Tuscany... some foods have no local substitutions!
Buon Appetito!
Ed Garrubbo
