Seafood Pasta with Uni Butter
Watch the video for a in-depth tutorial on how to make the dish. If you enjoyed watching, please give me a thumbs up/subscribe to me on YouTube!
One night after a long day of exploring Sydney, I decided to order room service at the Four Seasons hotel. I would’ve stayed out to discover more of Sydney’s restaurants, but since I was solo-traveling that day, I got lazy and figured it would be easiest for me to just order something to my room for dinner. Luckily, laziness won me a super delicious and unique pasta dish.
It was so delicious to the point where I lost all sense of tact and started asking the concierge to see if they could get me the recipe from the chef. Fortunately, the chef agreed to spill the beans and told me all the ingredients that went into the dish (but not necessarily the step-by-step instructions). Turns out what made the pasta so delicious was the uni butter.
After hearing the uni butter part I got a little bit disappointed, thinking of how rare and potentially expensive an ingredient uni—or sea urchin—is. Like, where the hell am I gonna get sea urchin just to cook this damn meal? Then it clicked: I can just go to my local Japanese market to get the uni. No need to scour a fancy seafood market.
For reference, here’s what the original dish looked like.
Even though uni butter might seem like it’s a rare and unconventional ingredient to cook with, the flavor payoff you’ll get is unrivaled. Plus, it’s actually super easy to make. The extra effort of visiting your Japanese market or seafood market will definitely show since the uni butter gives the dish a really fresh taste of the ocean, and also a creamy texture.
Seafood Pasta with Uni Butter
Ingredients (serves 2-3 people)
- 6-7 (2 oz/60g) pieces of uni (sea urchin)*
- 4 tbsp butter
- 8 oz (230g) spaghetti or linguine
- 10-15 shrimp (or any seafood of your choice)
- 3 small pieces of cuttlefish (or any seafood of your choice)
- about 8 heirloom cherry tomatoes
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- white wine
- 1 tbsp tomato sauce
- 1 tsp chili oil
- black Pepper
- salt
- olive oil
- parsley and parmesan cheese for garnish
Takes , Makes 2-3 servings.
*You can find this at your local Japanese market and fish market
Instructions
- Chop the heirloom tomatoes into halves, and dice up the garlic. Chop up the parsley for garnish at the very end.
- Add salt to a boiling pot of water. Drop in spaghetti and cook until al dente. Drain the pasta and rinse it under cold water to stop the cooking process (we'll finish cooking it in our sauce later).
- Add olive oil to a pan and sautée the seafood with the garlic and tomatoes. Add salt and pepper to season accordingly.
- Bring the heat down and add a splash of white wine. Add in the tomato sauce, chili oil, and uni butter, stirring constantly to make sure everything is combined.
- Fold in the cooked spaghetti, making sure it picks up the sauce. Add in half the parsley and allow it wilt down.
- Arrange pasta and seafood on a plate and garnish with more parsley. Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese on top.
If you decide to make this recipe, please tag me on Instagram (@cinders_zhang). If you enjoyed the cooking video, lease give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. also A huge shout out to the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney for the inspiration and recipe!
♥ Cindy