Frutti Di Mare

There are so many things I love about Frutti Di Mare, or spicy seafood pasta. Not only is it a flavor packed pasta dish filled with some of my favorite seafood, but it’s also so much easier to make than you would think.

It’s a really great and impressive dish to serve guests. They’ll think you slaved over the stove for hours, when in fact it takes just 30 minutes to create this beautiful dish!

What is Frutti Di Mare?

Frutti Di Mare literally translates to “fruit of the sea” (referring to seafood) It’s a popular Italian pasta dish made with spaghetti, arrabiata sauce and filled with a variety of seafood such as (but not limited to) mussels, clams, shrimp, scallops, squid, and/or octopus.

In our version we use bucatini, a homemade arrabiata sauce (spicy marinara sauce), black mussels, shrimp, squid, bay scallops, and finish the dish with fresh basil leaves.

How to Make Frutti Di Mare

Ingredients

Process

Pasta

1. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Add a small handful of salt and pasta. Boil pasta until al dente. Strain pasta into a colander and rinse in cool water until pasta is no longer hot.

Spicy Seafood Sauce

2. Place a large, high sided sauté pan over medium heat. Add oil and sliced garlic and cook.
3. Add mussels and toss together with oil and garlic.

4. Increase heat to medium-high, add wine and cover pan with lid. Keep pan covered until mussels open up. Remove lid.
5. Add shrimp and cover again until shrimp turns opaque. Remove lid once again.

6. Add bay scallops and squid bodies and tentacles. Cover one last time until tentacles curl. Season with salt and pepper and toss together.
7. Remove lid and add sauce into the seafood mixture.

8. Stir together. Lower heat to medium and simmer sauce.

Assembly

9. Add cooked pasta to the pan.
10. Toss together until everything is evenly coated.

11. Finish pasta with fresh basil leaves and serve. 

Tools You Will Need

• cutting board
• knife
• large pot
• liquid measuring cup
• wooden spoon
• tongs
• large sauté pan with tall sides or Dutch oven

Tips and Tricks for Success

• Don’t add the seafood to the pan all at once. You’ll notice we add the seafood in stages in our recipe. We do this because each type of seafood cooked up differently, so to prevent them from overcooking we add them according to how quickly they cook up.
• Don’t overdo it on the wine. Some of the seafood we use (like mussels and scallops) release a lot of liquid once they cook up, so you want to add just enough wine in the beginning to deglaze the pan and help the mussels steam and open up. If you add too much wine, the alcohol won’t be able to cook off and the sauce in the end will be too thin and unable to coat the overall dish well.

Variations

• Change up the type of pasta depending on personal preference! We’ve used thicker pastas like fettuccine and pappardelle as well as shaped pastas like fusilli and cavatappi and have loved them all!
• Switch up the seafood you use! Other great options we’ve used are: fresh crab meat, manila clams, octopus, sea scallops instead of bay scallops, etc!
• If spicy isn’t your thing you can definitely use a simple marinara sauce.

Wine Recommendations for Frutti Di Mare

Although red sauce pasta dishes are traditionally served with red wine, we actually prefer enjoying this dish with a nice crisp pinot grigio. The fruit forward flavor of pinot grigio goes really well with the variety of seafood in the dish.

We also enjoy serving our frutti di mare with a refreshing and crisp rosé which also goes well with the shellfish and doesn’t combat the heavy garlic flavors.

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