This is a dish that is rarely found in restaurants but is typical of the Lazio coast. We love to combine fish and shellfish with pecorino cheese.
Spaghetti with mussels and pecorino cheese
- Preparation time: 30 minutes
- For 4 people
- Difficulty: Average difficult recipe
- Ingredients
- 320 grams of spaghetti
- 2 kg of mussels
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 fresh chili pepper
- Extra virgin olive oil to taste
- Grated pecorino cheese to taste
- Instructions
- Prepare the mussels by removing the beards and scraping the shells. Rinse well in plenty of cold water.
- In a pan with some water, cook the mussels on high heat for a few minutes until they are open.
- Place them in a bowl covered with cellophane, then place this bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice water to cool the shellfish. When they are lukewarm, shell the mussels and keep them in the cooking water, filtered by a sieve.
- Boil the water for the pasta in a pot.
- Boil the water in a saucepan and toss the pasta.
- In a pan, stew the oil, garlic, and fresh chili pepper, then add the filtered liquid from the mussels.
- Drain the spaghetti “al dente” and pour it into the pan. Add, if necessary, ladles of unsalted boiling water and the shelled mussels.
- Serve with grated pecorino cheese and salt if necessary.
Tips to ensure the success of the dish:
- Covering the mussels with cellophane will prevent them from losing moisture. There is nothing sadder than a shrunken mussel. This procedure is useful because it allows you to cook them well in advance
- When cooking pasta with a seafood sauce, it would be better to salt the cooking water very little and adjust before plating.
- To cook pasta ideally, consider 1 liter or 1 US quart of water for every serving.
