Recipe: Manteca’s Chris Leach on how to make his brown crab spaghetti
This has been a dish that’s been a near permanent fixture on my menus for the last five years. I had the idea after a trip to California where I was inspired by a lot of flavour combinations. I thought the brown crab meat I had been using in a more traditional pasta dish might be interesting if I mixed it with the classic cheese and pepper.
INGREDIENTS (serves 4)
• 100g brown crab meat (at the restaurant we blitz the crab meat into a very smooth paste, this makes the sauce velvety. If you can’t blitz it, it won’t be an issue, it will just have a slightly coarser texture)
• 50g of butter
• 20 cracks of fresh black pepper
• 400g of dried pasta – a short pasta like rigatoni or spaghetti works very well
• 80g grated grana Padano
• 1 lemon
METHOD
• Put a large pot of water on to boil, when it boils add enough salt so it tastes like a highly seasoned soup. Cook the pasta for about a minute less than the packet instructions.
• While the pasta is cooking, toast the freshly ground pepper in a large pan over a medium heat. When you can start to smell the aromatics of the pepper, add the butter and a generous splash of pasta water (about 100ml) and let it all boil into an emulsion.
• Add the brown crab meat and mix until it is homogenised. Remove from the heat until the pasta is nearly done. When the pasta is ready, strain and add to the sauce. Put on a medium high heat until the sauce begins to boil then take it off the heat. Add the grated cheese, tossing until evenly distributed. Season with lemon and salt until it tastes good to you.
• Distribute among four plates and finish with a crack of fresh black pepper on each.
Chris Leach is chef co-founder of Manteca