This recipe is a surprising and delicious pairing of ingredients. Crab meets cream with lemon, chili, and parm. I omitted olives from the original recipe and doubled it. Adapted from Grains for Every Season.

Ingredients

• Kosher salt
• Olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
• 2 T unsalted butter
• 1 to 1.5 c whipping cream or creme fraiche
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and cut into small pieces
• 8oz dried whole wheat pasta, such as taglietelli
• 8oz Dungeness crab meat, cooked
• 1/3 c grated parmesan
• 2 t lemon zest
• 1 lemon
• handful arugula
• 2 T mint, roughly chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.
2. Heat a small glug of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook until soft, fragrant, and golden brown (but not burned!), about 5 minutes.
3. Scoop garlic into a small bowl and set aside for later.
4. In the same saucepan, reduce heat to medium-low and slowly heat butter until it starts to brown and smell nutty. (This can turn from browned to burned butter fast, so go nice and slow and don’t overdo it.)
5. Add cream and adjust heat to a gentle simmer.
6. Add jalapeno and cook, slightly reducing and infusing the cream with chili flavor.
7. Set butter/cream mixture aside while you cook the pasta.
8. Add pasta to boiling water and cook, according to package instructions, until al dente.
9. When the pasta is 30 seconds away from being fully cooked, scoop out a mugfull of cooking water, then drain the pasta.
10. Putt the cream sauce back on a low heat. Add pasta, crab, and cooked garlic.
11. Toss, letting the pasta absorb some of the sauce and finish cooking, adding a few splashes of pasta water to get your desired sauce consistency.
12. Remove from heat and add parmesan, lemon zest, salt and pepper to taste, and a few squeezes of lemon juice to taste.
13. Serve topped with arugula and mint.