Fregola Cooked Risotto-style with Seafood Sauce

Name: Fregola Cooked Risotto-style with Seafood Sauce (Fregola Risotatta con Ragù di Pesce)
Yield: Serves 6 as a first course
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 60 g baby octopus, cleaned and finely diced; salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper, to taste; 400 g fregola; about 1.7 litres Fish Stock; 8 saucer scallops, trimmed and finely diced; 40 g tomato paste (purée); 120 g squid, cleaned and skinned; 120 g raw prawns, peeled, deveined and finely diced; 100 g butter; 3 tablespoons finely sliced flat-leaf parsley leaves; ½ tablespoon thyme leaves; 30 ml Vermentino or other dry white wine; 1 tablespoon oregano leaves; 1 small brown onion, finely diced; ½ cup (125 ml) extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling; 1 tablespoon finely sliced basil leaves; 24 blue mussels, scrubbed lightly with a scourer; 1 clove garlic, finely sliced

Fregola Risotatta con Ragù di Pesce

Preparation info

Serves
6
as a first course

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

A Sardinian Cookbook

By Giovanni Pilu and Roberta Muir

Published 2012

About

Rather than being boiled, pasta – especially small shapes like fregola – can be cooked in the same way as risotto, with the liquid being stirred into it a little at a time until the pasta is tender. This makes for a particularly tasty dish as the pasta absorbs all of the flavour of the stock or sauce in which it’s cooked.

Ingredients

120 g squid, cleaned and skinned
24 blue mussels, scrubbed lightly with a scourer
about 1.7

Method

Cut squid hood open. Using the back of a knife, scrape off the membrane from inside the hood. Trim off the base and dice the hood finely; halve tentacles.

Place mussels in a large frying pan over high heat. Cover, shake pan well and cook for about 3 minutes, shaking occasionally, until most of the shells open. Remove from heat. Fish out any mussels that haven’t opened and, using a blunt