Thursday

last night I made a few things:

starter:  Haricot Vert from Smitten Kitchen.  It was ok, but I think I really crave the more seared style, with garlic and lemon juice and just some toasted almonds or sesame seeds on top

main:  Oil-poached salmon and spicy crab rigatoni , loosely based on Bittman's "recipe" here.  The salmon was wild caught but frozen, from the Grocery Outlet.  If I did it again I'd either use a higher-quality, thicker fish, or make more of a sauce to go over the top. As is, it just tasted like nothing, with oil and lemon.

However, the pasta was fantastic, and fast.  I'm calling it spicy, but it really just had a wonderful complicated flavor where you could taste the chilis but not feel the heat. This is what I remember doing:

Serves 6 ( 1 C finished serving size)

1. take the oil that the salmon poached in (with the 3 cloves of rough-chopped garlic and thyme still in it) 
2. Start pasta boiling in salted water until 1 min before al dente
3.  6 chopped Romas or a can of San Marzanos (I actually used a mix of both).  Cook until tomatoes start to slump and smell good
4. Add 1/2 C white wine and a few pinches of cayenne pepper, and some salt
5. add 14 oz frozen crab meat (I think any seafood would actually work here, scallops or clam or whatever).   
6. Cook until the liquid from the tomatoes, wine and crab meat has reduced by half
7. when pasta is 80% cooked, scoop it into tomato sauce, add 2 T butter, and let it finish cooking until the rest of the liquid is absorbed
8. Finish with lemon, pepper and fresh basil

Serve it to your husband and his twitching nose.  He will ask what he did to deserve such bounty.