“Obviously I’ve spent most of my working life with men and they have this way of operating which seems a bit alien to me.”
Janet Street-Porter, Life’s Too F***ing Short
Janet Street-Porter is a bit like Marmite. You either love her or you hate her. I like strong tastes, so I am a great fan of her no-nonsense, strictly frank, approach to life. In 2000, she was nominated for the “Mae West Award for the Most Outspoken Woman in the Industry” – and frankly, I don’t know why she didn’t win it.
A few years ago she wrote a self-help book entitled Life’s Too F***ing Short in which she advises,
“Create your own small repertoire, Eat well. But above all, make it simple.”
She gives a couple of recipes out of her own repertoire, and this is one I have tried and adapted, and incorporated into my own repertoire, very successfully.
Because Life’s Too F***ing Short Crab Pasta
Serves about 2
Ingredients
- 100g/4 oz mixed brown and white crab meat
- 1 handful flat-leaved parsley
- 1 bunch of spring onions
- 2 fat cloves of garlic, crushed with 1 tsp smoked salt
- 250g/8 oz pasta – spaghetti or fettucine (100g helping for ladies; 150g helping for men)
- 80ml/⅓ cup dry vermouth (Noilly Prat for choice)
- 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or paprika
- butter for frying
- Indonesian long pepper
- 80ml/⅓ cup crème fraîche
Method
- Put a large saucepan of water on to boil with some salt and olive oil in it.
- Put a couple of generous knobs of butter in the bottom of a small saucepan.
- Using kitchen scissors (a brilliant tip from Janet Street-Porter this) chop the spring onions directly into the saucepan (including a couple of cm/1” of the green), and add the crushed garlic.
- Snip in the parsley into the saucepan as well.
- When the spring onion starts to go a little soft, add the crab meat.
- Add the dry vermouth and the Aleppo pepper and the ordinary pepper.
- Cook for about five minutes, then keep warm.
- Cook your pasta according to the packet instructions.
- Serve, topped with the crab sauce and the crème fraîche.
Music to listen to as you cook
Spaghetti, Pollo, Insalatina…. by Fred Bongusto.
