A Dish That Tastes of the Shore

Some suppers carry a place with them. A pot of cockles eaten on a cold bench, a paper cone of chips with too much vinegar, a crab sandwich bought straight off the harbour wall. This pasta sits in the same company, and it takes about twenty minutes to make, which is roughly the time it takes for the sea air to work up an appetite.

The idea is simple: sweet white crab meat, the salty crunch of marsh samphire, lemon to lift the whole thing, and just enough olive oil and pasta water to bind it without smothering it. It is a dish for two, cooked in one pan plus one pot, and it is at its absolute best between late June and early September, when samphire is fat, cheap and piled up on fishmongers' slabs along the coast.

The golden rule is restraint. Crab meat is delicate and expensive, samphire is naturally salty, and lemon is loud. Nothing needs help. Your job is to warm things through, not to cook them into submission.

What to Buy for Two

This recipe makes a generous supper for two adults, or a lighter one for two with bread and a tomato salad alongside.

• 200g dried linguine or spaghetti — something with a bit of grip rather than slippery angel hair
• 200g white crab meat, ideally picked that morning
• 100g marsh samphire, roughly two decent handfuls
• 1 unwaxed lemon, zest and juice
• 2 tbsp good olive oil and a knob of butter, about 20g
• 1 small garlic clove, sliced paper-thin
• A pinch of dried chilli flakes
• Black pepper, and no salt until you have tasted it

On the crab: ask your fishmonger for white crab meat and, if they have it, a spoonful of brown crab meat as well. The brown stuff is darker, richer and more intensely crabby — a teaspoon or two folded in early gives the sauce a lovely depth that white meat alone cannot manage. If you are buying a whole cooked crab instead, allow around 1kg for two people and ask for it to be picked. Native crab from colder water tends to be sweeter than imported alternatives, and hen crabs carry more meat in the claws.

On the samphire: marsh samphire is the bright green, jointed, rubbery stuff sold in bunches from June onwards. Do not confuse it with rock samphire, which grows on cliff faces, is much stronger and has a slightly medicinal edge. If your shop has run out, a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley with a few capers will do a reasonable impression, though you will need a careful pinch of salt.

Samphire: The Quickest Cook in Your Kitchen

Give the samphire a good rinse under cold water, swishing it about to shift the grit and any stray bits of weed, then snap off the woody lower stems. It is a seaside plant, so it comes with sand in its elbows.

Now cook it for barely any time at all. Drop it into a pan of boiling water — unsalted, remember — for sixty to ninety seconds, then drain. That is the whole job. Cooked longer it turns stringy and loses its snap, which is the one thing you want from it. It is also perfectly good raw, finely chopped into a salad, all crunch and brine.

Get the pasta going at the same time in a separate pan, salted lightly. Samphire brings plenty of seasoning with it, and a sauce that tastes of the sea should not taste of the salt cellar.

Building the Sauce Without Drowning It

Warm two tablespoons of olive oil in a wide, shallow pan over a low heat. Add the sliced garlic and the chilli flakes and let them soften for a minute. You are looking for gentle fragrance, not colour — the moment garlic browns, it turns bitter and there is no going back.

Add the drained samphire and toss it about for thirty seconds. Now add the drained pasta with a good splash of its cooking water, maybe three or four tablespoons, and stir firmly. That starchy water is what turns oil and lemon juice into something that clings to the pasta rather than pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

Take the pan off the heat before the crab goes in. This is the part that matters most. Crab meat added to a hot pan tightens, loses its sweetness and starts to taste of nothing much. Off the heat it simply warms through in the residual heat of the sauce. Fold in the brown crab meat first if you are using it, then the white meat, the butter, the zest of the lemon and a squeeze of juice. Toss gently — you want to keep those lumps of white crab intact. Finish with a generous grind of black pepper, taste, and only then decide whether it needs anything else.

Serve it straight away, in warmed bowls. This is not a dish that waits patiently.

Small Twists, and What to Drink

The recipe is a skeleton, and it takes kindly to small changes. Try any one of these, not all of them at once:

• A tablespoon of crème fraîche stirred in with the butter for a softer, pinker sauce
• Brown shrimp instead of, or alongside, half the crab
• A pinch of fennel seed crushed into the oil with the chilli
• Orzo in place of long pasta, cooked risotto-style and spooned into bowls
• A handful of frozen peas added with the pasta water — unfashionable, but very good

To drink, you want something dry, brisk and unoaked. Muscadet, Picpoul de Pinet or a bone-dry English white from a coastal vineyard all do the job, and the last of those is a pleasingly neat match. A dry cider works too, if you are eating outside. What you do not want is anything oaky or buttery — it will trample all over the crab.

Eating It Where It Comes From

If you can, buy your crab and samphire on the same morning and cook it the same day. Crab meat is at its best within twenty-four hours of picking, and samphire loses its bite in the fridge almost overnight. Wrap the crab tightly, keep the samphire in a damp cloth, and use both quickly.

Should you fancy gathering your own samphire, pick only the top few joints from each plant, never pull up the roots, and stick to places where it is permitted — many estuaries and nature reserves protect it. Leave the cliff-growing rock samphire well alone; it is genuinely dangerous to collect.

Then take the bowls outside, if there is a bench, a harbour wall or even a windy bit of beach within reach. Eat while it is hot, mop the bowl with bread, and let the lemon do its work. It is a twenty-minute supper that tastes like a whole afternoon by the sea.