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Tagliarini with raw green and yellow courgette, brown shrimp, chilli and lemon

This recipe is from the book Trullo by Tim Siadatan the chef owner of the restaurant of the same name in Highbury.
It is an excellent book with many interesting ideas and recipes.
This is one of them, substitute cooked crayfish or prawns for the shrimp if you can’t get them.
The vigorous tossing of the pasta with a little pasta water is the key to getting a nice sauce.
We used spiralized courgettes rather than grated to get a little different texture but it works fine if you use the large holes on a grater to get decent sized pieces

ingredients

400g of tagliarini, or use spaghetti or linguine (fresh or dried)
4 tbsp of courgette, coarsley grated
4 tbsp of yellow courgettes
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
80g of unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 lemon, juiced
1/4 tsp dried chilli, finely chopped
6 tbsp of brown shrimp, cooked and peeled
freshly ground black pepper

Method

Place the grated courgette in a colander and add ½ teaspoon fine salt. Place a bowl under the colander and leave for 1 hour. Squeeze out the courgette to extract as much liquid as possible

Put a large pan of water on to boil. Once the water is boiling, add enough salt to resemble mild sea water. Add the tagliarini and cook for 2 minutes (if using dried pasta cook until al dente)

At the same time, in a saucepan big enough to hold the pasta, heat together the butter, a splash of the pasta cooking water, lemon juice and chilli over a low to medium heat. When the pasta is cooked, remove it from the water and add it to the pan of butter and lemon to toss. Keep the pasta cooking water


Add the raw courgette and brown shrimp and vigorously toss the pasta in the pan for at least 30 seconds to work the gluten, adding a splash of starchy cooking water if it starts to dry up. Continue tossing the pasta until the sauce emulsifies and becomes viscous, and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately

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