Fra Diavolo

While traditional Fra Diavolo gets its spice from the sauce, this Fra Diavolo gets all its heat from the pasta itself! 

This recipe uses one of my favorite things from the frozen seafood case. Prepackaged, cooked and shelled seafood. I really love mussels and if I have the time, steaming them is a great joy. But, when I want to whip together a pasta, having to do all that first kind of takes the fun out of it. Find them if you can, but if you can’t get the precooked ones, I’ll include a recipe for basic steaming underneath. You can use cooked shrimp for this as well if you have them handy, but you’ll only need half the oil.

Fra Diavolo?

1 pkg Peperoncino Pasta

½ pound mussels, cooked and shelled/thawed*

½ pound shrimp, peeled and deveined with tails removed**

¼ cup fresh or frozen green peas

4 tbsp Garlic Olive Oil, divided**

¼ cup white wine
2 tbsp tomato paste

2 cups heavy whipping cream

4 ounces cream cheese

1 cup grated Parmesan Cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook the pepper pasta until al dente, 6 or 7 minutes. Rinse, drain and set aside.

In a medium sauce pan, combine the wine, tomato paste, whipping cream, and cream cheese. Cook over medium heat and whisk until dissolved together. Add 2 tbsp of Garlic oil, salt and pepper and parmesan cheese. Increase the heat to high and cook about five minutes, or until thickened slightly, whisking constantly.

In a large sauce-pan, heat the remaining 2 tbsps of Garlic oil to medium low. Place the shrimp in an even layer of the bottom of the pan, do it in batches if you have to. Without moving them, cook for 2 minutes and then flip and repeat. They should be firm and evenly pink on each side.

Add the shrimp, peas and mussels to the sauce-pan and let simmer for another minute. Flip the pasta into the sauce and toss to coat. Serve.

*Cooking mussels isn’t hard, just time consuming. For the steaming liquid, I like a combination of white wine and vegetable broth with big chunks of garlic and parsley in it. Here is a link to the best steaming method, this is the way I do it, I can’t write it any better. Steaming Mussels.

**Fresh Shrimp vs Frozen Shrimp. I prefer fresh shrimp most of the time, but I have a bunch of frozen shrimp in the freezer left over from a party. If you use the pre-cooked kind, you can toss them right in when you put the mussels and peas in. I like to give them a little spin around a saute pan anyway. You won’t need all the remaining olive oil, just toss them with one tbsp of the garlic oil and saute on medium for about a minute. Then go ahead with the recipe as planned.