Yesterday we had a fab day celebrating the lovely Hishal’s 4th Birthday in East London, it was lovely to see D’s cousins and eat lots of lovely BBQ food by the lovely Yogesh and Veerusha and her cake baking skills are second to none!

I wanted to make something really light and meat-free for dinner, and after such a long drive it had to be quick! So I made myself a little apéritif of rose, soda and ice and got to work…

As you’ve probably seen from my recent posts, I’m a bit of a fan of my new spiraliser (Zoodle Chef, £15 on Amazon) and so I decided to make some ‘pasta’ otherwise known as courgetti. This is where you spiralise courgette and use it as a replacement for spaghetti. If you don’t have a sprialiser, you can just shave the courgette using a peeler and either have it as ‘papardelle’ or use a knife to slice it into thin, ‘pasta’ strips.

Once you’ve got the courgette ready this is a pretty fast recipe so get everything laid out and ready to go.

Ingredients

5 Courgettes
2 tins of crab meat
Handful parsley and basil
3-4 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 tbsp cold water
Juice of 1 lemon
400g tin of Cheery tomatoes (or normal tinned tomatoes + handful of fresh cherry tomatoes)
50g pine nuts
Rocket and mixed seeds to decorate

Method

Spiralise your courgetti and put it in a bowl.

Make the pesto by adding the basil, pine nuts, parsley, water, oil and lemon juice to a blender and let it go for a minute or two

Add the pesto to a saucepan with the tinned cherry tomatoes – this will look a weird colour but don’t worry! Warm it through on quite a low to medium heat. You can add a small teaspoon of honey at this point to offset the acidity of the tomatoes but this isn’t vital.

In a separate pan with a lid, put as much of the courgette in as will fit and 2 tbsp of water. Put the lid on and warm it through for a couple of minutes, remove the lid – if it is soft enough, drain it and do the same again with the next batch of courgette – depending on the size of the pan, repeat as necessary until all of the courgette is cooked.

Add the crab to the pesto/tomato sauce mix and season and stir well. Then add the courgetti to the sauce mix and stir/toss and allow it to warm through for a minute or two.

Serve in warmed bowls with a drizzle of olive oil and a topping of lemon juice, rocket and mixed seeds.