Recipe below: Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce
Recipe below in text: Escarole Salad with Pear, Almonds, and Montasio
My plan was to make this pasta with calamari, but the squid I found was too large. I needed it small because my idea was to cook everything quickly, keeping the taste fresh and the texture bouncy. Bright red sauce, white calamari. Larger squid needs a slow simmer to become tender, and that would have compromised the freshness I was going for. So I went with shrimp instead.
The Lobster Place, in Chelsea Market, has a good retail fish counter. A lot of people don’t know that because they go there only to eat the fancy sushi and steamed lobsters that are mentioned in all the New York City guidebooks. The place is always mobbed with Japanese tourists, who ignore the fish counter, likely having no place to cook, so it stays freed up for the locals. The other day they had good-looking wild-caught medium-size shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. It smelled sweet, and I could sense that its pretty gray shells would make a nice broth for the pasta. And they did.
The sauce I had in mind for the dish was a little unusual, mixing together miso, ginger, shallot, butter, vermouth, rosemary, and tomatoes. But I tell you it worked. It tasted like Christmas, and I might just go with it for my Christmas Eve fish dinner, maybe with calamari, as I originally intended, or with lobster. My grandfather Erico, who I never met, used to make pasta with lobster every Christmas Eve. I obviously never tasted his version, but that makes the nostalgic pull of the dish even stronger. My mother said he added a lot of brandy.
While I was at Chelsea Market I made my way downstairs to Buon’Italia. If you’ve never been, just think of it as an intimate, more manageable Eataly. I never leave it pissed off, unlike Eataly. And it’s just starting to get its Christmas decor together. I’m not usually big on Christmas decorations unless they have a dark edge, but I do love holiday food displays. Here are photos of a couple of appealing ones at Buon’Italia. I need to go back and get some of that marzipan.
While at Buon’Italia, I picked up a bag of Setaro pasta to go with my shrimp dish. Setaro is a great old pasta company in Napoli. I chose scialatielli, a thick, stubby fettuccine-type shape from the Amalfi coast that I love for its chewiness. It’s used primarily for tomato and seafood sauces. When it’s made fresh, parmigiano and basil are sometimes worked into the dough. Made dry, it never seems to have that flavoring. I have made it fresh myself, and maybe I will for Christmas. If so, I’ll get a recipe together for you.
If you’d like to try my Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce, here’s what you’ll need to buy and do.
Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce
1 ½ pounds large shrimp, shelled and deveined, but you’ll want to keep the shells
Salt
Aleppo pepper
A big pinch of sugar
A drizzle of olive oil
¾ stick unsalted butter
½ cup dry vermouth
1 heaping tablespoon white miso
2 shallots, diced
A 1/2-inch-thick chunk fresh ginger, minced
A long stem of rosemary, the leaves chopped
2 fresh bay leaves
1 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, roughly chopped, saving the juice
In a bowl, toss the shrimp with a little salt, Aleppo to taste, a big pinch of sugar, and a drizzle of olive oil. Stick it in the fridge until you’re ready to cook it.
Put half of the butter in a saucepan, and melt it over medium heat. Add the shrimp shells, and sauté them until they turn pink. Add the vermouth and miso and about 2 cups of water. Stir to dissolve the miso. Let the mix simmer, uncovered, until it’s sweetly shrimpy smelling and has reduced by half. Strain it.
In a large sauté pan, melt the remaining butter over medium heat, and add the shallots and the ginger. Sauté until soft and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add half of the rosemary and the bay leaves, and sauté a minute longer, just to release their essences. Add the shrimp broth, and simmer for about another 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and cook for about 5 minutes.
While the sauce is cooking, set up a pot of pasta water and bring it to a boil. Add salt. Add the scialatielli.
Get out a another large sauté pan, and get it hot over high heat. Add the shrimp, and sear them quickly until they’re lightly browned but still a little undercooked. Add them to the tomato sauce, stirring them in. Add a little more Aleppo if you like, and taste for salt. You may or may not need it, depending on how salty your miso is.
When the scialatielli is al dente, tip it into a large, wide serving bowl. Pour on the shrimp sauce, and give it a gentle toss. Sprinkle the remaining rosemary over the top. Serve right away.
To follow this pasta, I served a salad of escarole, pear, almonds, and Montasio cheese (also from Buon’Italia). If you’d like to try it, buy a head of escarole, and pull off the tough outer leaves (saving them for a sauté or a soup). Tear the tender inner leaves into bite-size pieces, and put them in a salad bowl. Scatter on a sliced pear, some lightly toasted whole almonds, and some slices of Montasio. I tossed this with a dressing of sherry wine vinegar, good olive oil, salt, and black pepper. I really like that combination.
Erica De Mane 
I really like the sound of the pasta sauce! A lot! And…I’d not made any decision regarding Christmas Eve! Sooo….
THe nice things is you can sub various types of seafood things, lobster, clams, mussels. Or a mix.
Great job! This post was really informative about street food.