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Friday, July 18, 2008

Pasta Lalah

Lalah is a kind of local shellfish. It doesn't appear every day, so when the day it appeared in the supermarket I picked up a small serving for a song (like, all of 50 cents). The idea is to use the sauce to steam the mussels before integrating the shellfish, sauce and pasta together. My pot was large enough to prepare the sauce in it, then place a stand and a shallow dish inside to steam the lalah with it. If you don't have a large enough pot, you can consider emptying the sauce into a microwave steamer and steaming the lalah there.


Pasta Lalah (serves 1)
15 lalah or clams
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
3 tbsp white wine (strictly optional, but there are some flavours in tomato that are only soluble in alcohol)
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup Water
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
1 serve pasta, cooked (I used linguine)

1. Cook pasta to al dente and toss lightly with olive oil. Set aside.
2. Over low heat, sweat the leek and garlic with a little salt until wilted.
3. Add tomatoes, tomato paste and white wine and stir for a minute before adding the water.
4. Use the sauce as the base liquid to steam the lalah for three minutes.
5. Deshell mussels, and return to the pot with the pasta. Mix well and serve.

* Be sure to wash your lalah thoroughly! They are real dirt collectors.

Total cost: RM 1.40++
Breakdown:
Lalah - 50 cents
Leek - 50 cents
Tomato - 40 cents
(The rest are stuff you should always have around in the kitchen anyway)

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2 comments:

Agagooga said...

The rest are stuff you should always have around in the kitchen anyway

It's never wise to ignore sunk costs!!!

If, say, you use wine to cook everyday, it adds up. Unless you're using 2 euro 50 wine (but that's another story)

noelbynature said...

haha, if only wine were 2 euro fifty here. I've long given up trying to cook like I did in Australia.