TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Cooking With Cecilia

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Cooking With Cecilia - Pasta with Crab Roe or Aligue

Brace yourselves folks! This blog entry is about crab roe or in Tagalog "taba ng talangka" or "aligue" The orange crab roe (commonly referred to as crab fat) is high in cholesterol, so beware.

While I was in Daluyon Resort with some writers, I ordered Pasta with Aligue. The original menu called for crab roe with mayonnaise, and I asked the chef to hold the mayo.

Out the pasta came, nestled in the orange crab roe. It was heavenly! How do I describe the taste? You can taste the sea and the richness of the crab roe. There's something sinful about eating crab roe; it's like eating rich chocolate or foie gras -- you don't eat it all the time, but when you do, it's a treat.

I made it a point to look for crab roe to bring back to the US. I was told it comes jarred or canned, and to my surprise, it wasn't that easy to find. I had to go to high end Rustan's Supermarket in Makati to find jarred ones. I also found canned ones in Razon's Restaurant in Makati.

Some Pasta with Aligue recipes call for adding cream or mayonnaise; but I think that could just curdle your blood in your veins, right then and there. So, here's a better suggestion. I still have to try it, but my friends said to saute in olive oil lots of garlic, tomatoes, and shiitake mushrooms. Add crab roe. Squeeze lemon juice. Add pepper. Add basil. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top. I plan to add crab meat to this concoction. Others have added clams or shrimps to their Pasta with Aligue.

This pasta should go well with a green salad, sour dough bread, and white wine.
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That's me at the Daluyon Resort

In the meantime, this is all for now,
Cecilia

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.