benazir's blog

Seafood Pasta Salad

I remember going to Old Country Buffet with some family members and it is a smorgasboard place where you can eat your fill until you are no longer hungry and the prices where pretty decent. Their seafood pasta salad was the bomb and it too had crab meat in it. However I am writing mine a lot differently and this is where I got my idea from.

I used to go there at times with my family and one time I went there with a dear friend after I became her caregiver. Usually this is not advised but she had a hard time getting around because she had servere arthritis. I used to make a b line to their seafood pasta salad and their baked fish. The drinks where included too in this price also and so were their deserts. So this post is a nod to one of my favorite items from Old Country Buffet.

You will need 1 gallon or 4 liters of water for one. Place it on the stove to boil rapidly by placing the cover over the pot to speed up the process. Add 1 tsp of olive oil and a pinch of pink salt to the water and add either 1 box of elbow or shell macaroni only. Bonza chickpea pasta is what I use because it has half the carbs of regular pasta. Let cook for 10 minutes or until it is nearly soft.

Drain the pasta and add it right back to the pot. From here you can use 1 package of immitation crab which comes from a fish called pollak which has the similarities of codfish. Read the lable for the ingredients and check and see how many carbs there is in the nutrition section of the label too. This is how I go about buying things before it goes in to my grocery cart. This for me is health and for religious reasons.

Artificial crab is also called surmai and they can be found in a lot of Asian stores because this is used to also make sushi which we talked about in an earlier post. You can also use either 1 can of crab meat, baby shrimp, Clams, oysters, mussels, octopus, squid from a can undrained or you can use 1 bag of frozen shrimp that has been cleaned and deveined or scallops. This can be sauteed without seasoning in 1 oz of either olive oil, grapeseed oil, peanut oil, sunflower, oil, safflower oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, or corn oil. Cook unitl opaque and add to the macaroni if you are using these instead of the artificial crab or canned seafood.

There is a bag of mixed frozen seafood that is fully cooked and all you have to do is thaw it out overnight in the refridgerator. Open the bag and rinse and drain them before adding to the macaroni. If you do not use the frozen shrimp or scallops then add one of the above oils to the macaroni as well and you can add the same amount of oil of different type in its place.

They are flaxseed, macadamia, hemp, pumpkin, walnut, macadamia nut, hazelnut or almond. Mix and add 2 cloves of garlic crushed and either 1 onion or shallot chopped fine. Add 3 tbs of mayonaise, 1 capful of either wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, 1 pinch of watercress, parsley, chervil, lovage, savory, rosemary, chives or dill weed or add 3 shakes of mrs dash and mix again. Add 1 drop eac of liquid smoke, hot sauce, 3 of shakes of lemon pepper, 1 pinch of either vegtea seasoning, kosher salt, pink salt sea salt, adobo, goya seasonador or seasoned salt. Grind 1 pinch of peppercorns in mortar and pestle and add to this seafood macoaroni salad and stir for the final time and that is it. Please enjoy this as a side dish when you are having any type of a fish dinner.

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