Squid Ink Pasta At AKA In Pasadena

Squid ink pasta with seafood cream sauce from AKA in Pasadena.

For the pasta:

4 cups all-purpose flour

5 eggs

1 tablespoon squid ink

1 teaspoon salt

Water as needed

Form a well with the flour, add eggs, salt and squid ink (if not available, don't worry).

Work the flour into the eggs with a fork until it forms a workable piece of dough.

Knead for 10 minutes by hand, adding a little bit water of needed. You could also just do it the lazy way with a mixer and dough hook.

Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 45 minutes in the refrigerator.

Remove from the refrigerator and let it rest again for an additional 45 minutes.

Proceed to roll out dough and pass it through your pasta maker as you would any other type of dough.

For the lobster/shrimp cream sauce

16/20 shrimp with shells

Reserved shrimp shells, all shells or 1 lobster body

1 1/2/ cups white wine

1 1/2 cups fish stock (Veg or chicken stock can be substituted.)

1 sliced shallot

2 cloves garlic smashed

1/2 bay leaf

1 teaspoon peppercorns

3 cups heavy cream

1 small pinch saffron threads

Peel and devein the shrimp.

Place the shrimp shells, white wine, fish stock, shallot, garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns into a 6-quart pot and reduce on medium/high heat until you have about half of a cup of liquid left.

Add heavy cream and saffron, reduce until the sauce thickens.

Strain and press out all of that goodness with a ladle.

Add the strained sauce to a sauce pan and season with salt and pepper. Reduce down more if needed.

For the shrimp

Season with salt and pepper.

You can either grill (preferred) or sauté the shrimp.

Boil your pasta, place into your shrimp cream sauce, cook on medium heat for 30 seconds and place into a pasta bowl. Arrange the shrimp on top as desired.

Garnish with chopped chives.