This recipe is based on a dish of my husband’s that used local cockle meats with wild garlic in a wine sauce served with penne pasta. I’ve updated the recipe by replacing the wild garlic with spinach and garlic and ensuring you can use any shellfish meats for the sauce. This works as well with fresh shellfish as with preserved. You could use cockles, pariwinkles, quartered limpets, halved mussels, whelks or whatever you have readily to hand.Prep time: 15 minutes/Cook time 20 minutes/Serves: 4
Ingredients:
2 tbsp butter
225g shellfish meat (fresh or preserved)
350g penne pasta
100g spinach, shredded
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
300ml white wine
2 tbsp cornflour blended to a slurry with 4 tbsp water
salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Method:
Bring a pan of salted water to a boil, add the penne pasta and cook according to the package instructions (usually 8-10 minutes)
About half way through the pasta cooking time, melt the butter in a pan, add the shellfish (wash well if preserved) and stir fry for a minute. Pour in the wine and bring to a simmer.
Stir in the chilli then add the chopped spinach and garlic. Stir until the leaves are just wilted then stir in the cornflour slurry. Simmer the sauce gently until thickened to your liking.
When the pasta is ready, drain and add to the wine sauce. Add a small ladleful of the pasta cooking water, bring to a simmer, toss to coat, adjust the seasonings to taste and serve. If desired you can garnish with parmesan shavings just before bringing to the table.
