Vince Garreffa - Theo Kalogeracos

This is an amazing dish that really brings out the best of the Swan river crab.

Ingredients for 2 people

• 2 Swan river crabs
• 1 600ml jar passata (tomato sauce) or 1kg roma tomato’s skin peeled
• 2 Mylup onions the size of a golf ball, stalks and all, if not available use 6 spring
• Onions roughly chopped stalks and all.
• 1 red chill chopped roughly with seeds
• Pinch salt and pepper
• 10 torn basil leaves
• 500gm spaghetti no 3 boil for5 min

Method

First thing you do is get your pot full of water and heavily salted on the boil for the pasta.

Using a big pan or a wok on a medium size flame, drizzle in about 4 tablespoons of olive oil, once the oil is hot add onion and onion stalks, mix and cook for about 3 minutes till they start to soften, add peeled roma tomato’s or the jar of passata, place the flame on high, stir till the tomato’s start to boil then put on a medium flame, allow to simmer for 10 minutes, (if the sauce is thickening up too much you can add a cup of water to the sauce to make a nice runny sauce).

Your water should have boiled and ready for the pasta, add pasta to the boiling water then add the crabs to the sauce, and salt and pepper, stir the pasta, put your timer on 5 minutes, continue stirring the pasta, add the chillis to the crab and sauce, stir well, making sure you are covering the crab with sauce, taste the sauce to see if it needs more seasoning with salt or pepper.

When 5 minutes is up and the timer goes off, drain the pasta, take the crabs out of the sauce and put them to the side on a plate add the pasta to the sauce and the torn basil leaves, stir through the sauce, using a big plate put all the pasta and sauce on the plate then put the crabs on top, serving it like this is the best way, you start to break and eat the crab first, so you get to enjoy the beautiful swan river crab and all the juices fall onto the pasta, when you have finished the crabs then you get to eat an amazing pasta in a beautiful rich tomato sauce.