Elevate your date night game for cheap! Make this decadent yet budget-friendly pasta at home, that tastes just like the restaurant version.

Time: 2/5
I’d argue that time is better spent with your honey than your stove.

Effort: 2/5
Boil something in a pot while you boil some other things in a pan.

Decadence on a budget

Pasta is a great beginner-friendly and budget-friendly way to make date night fancy, on the cheap. If you can boil water, you’re well on your way towards cooking to impress!

There’s this steak place that my SO and I love going to. It’s a hole-in-the-wall type establishment that, by virtue of its obscurity, caters mainly to people in the know. She was introduced by her colleagues and was thoroughly impressed. The first time she brought me, she insisted on ordering a crab and truffle pasta.

One of the secret pleasures of being a home cook is the feeling of achievement when you see something on a menu and think to yourself, I could do this at home! And for much less money at that; it’s like you’re undercutting the restaurant, and it’s a wonderful feeling for a cheapskate like me.

Which is why, since my start in cooking for myself by following along Chef John videos, I’ve almost never ordered pasta when going out for the past decade. And I’ve gotten good enough at it that I felt confident I could take a reasonable stab at this (admittedly stunning) dish.

That thought laid dormant in the back of my mind, until I got a mostly unused jar of truffle sauce from my mother. Thus inspired, I picked up some frozen crab meat on the cheap (it was more crab paste than crab meat, but oh well) and got to work.

I’m proud to announce that I pretty much nailed it on the first try. It was like 80% similar to the real deal, and almost a tenth of the price. A dollar saved is a dollar earned! Turns out it’s not that hard to make an impressive pasta, like this stunning Lobster Tail Tagliatelle.

With such a high effort-to-reward ratio, these sorts of pasta dishes are what I recommend to everyone looking to elevate their date night game. Besides, I’m getting some very naughty thoughts about what to do with the very, very delicious leftover pasta sauce …

Dramatis Personae

Serves two, because it’s date night and I’m a relatively conventional person when it comes to dating.

Sauce

Crab: 200g
Shellfish in general are pretty lean protein sources, and crab in particular is packed with savouriness. You’ll have to make a judgement call on what sort of crab meat to get, because the bigger the chunks the costlier it gets.

Parmesan cheese: 50g
Seasoning, flavour and thickening all in one ingredient. What’s not to love? Be sure to save the rind, to add to soups or stews to infuse them with cheesy flavour.

Heavy cream: 100g
It’s a cream sauce after all. A bit of cream and lovin’ every now and then never hurt nobody, so save the food guilt for another day.

Freshly cracked black pepper: plenty.
This is going to be a very rich sauce, and it takes a lot of seasoning to make the flavours stand up in a more 3-dimensional way.

Pasta – 150g

It’s very easy to have a lot of pasta in one go, especially when the sauce is as good as this one. That makes portion control essential. Be conservative with the serving of pasta, and serve your meal with something on the side like a nice, big salad and have fruit after your meal.

You can go with any pasta shape you want, but I’ve only ever seen it done with longer shapes like spaghetti and tagliatelle. Whichever one you choose, cook the noodles by about a minute less than package instructions and let them finish cooking while you toss them in the sauce to get a nice, toothsome al dente texture.

Garnish

A bit of green is always nice to elevate your dishes, and pretty food tastes better. This time, I went with a sprig of Thai basil which I’ve been growing in a pot on my windowsill, but you could just as easily scatter some dried parsley over the top like I did with an earlier iteration.

Executive summary

1. Gather your ingredients. Bring salted water to a boil.
2. While waiting for water to boil, grate the cheese.
3. Once water is at a boil, put pasta into pot. Set a timer for one minute less than package instructions.
4. Heat heavy cream in a pan on gentle heat. Add crab meat to pan. Stir occasionally.
5. Once crab is just cooked, switch off the heat. Add cheese, truffle sauce, garlic and black pepper. Stir to combine.
6. When timer goes off, drain pasta and add to sauce. Toss to combine and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. Here’s a sad little sprig of Thai basil from a dying plant that I’m reviving by soaking in some water. By the time I’m done cooking, it will have taken up enough moisture that it will look fresh and turgid instead of limp and wilted.

I grated my cheese ahead of time because I’m not confident that I could put the sauce together in the time it takes to boil the pasta. I’ll learn soon enough that my fears are unfounded, but it’s always better to take things easy the first time around.

Apologies for the steam. While I was grating, I was bringing this pot of water to boil. Now that it’s boiling, it’s time to add a generous amount of salt along with the pasta. Set a timer so you don’t forget to drain it.

I heat up the cream gently, stirring to break up the crab. It doesn’t take much for crab to cook, so this gentle scramble is plenty enough. Don’t worry about reducing the cream too much, the sauce will thicken up plenty once you add the cheese.

I kill the heat before adding the Parmesan and truffle sauce, to avoid splitting the cheese and cooking off the delicate and aromatic truffles. Here is where you also add black pepper.

You put your pasta in and take your red tongs out, you toss it in the sauce and you move it all about …

Here’s where I did the fancy YouTube chef thing and twirl the pasta up into a mound to give some height when it’s plated. It’s also a cautionary tale against taking half measures, because in my reluctance to wash an extra ladle I made a mess on the plate trying to wrestle my nest or pasta back into shape.

Hey look! Some of that truffle, Parmesan and crab infused cream didn’t make it onto the plate. Let’s save it and put it to good use down the line.

And there we go! Date night pasta. Enjoy!

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