Pasta and Salad...More similar than you think

Sure, there's cream sauce, red sauce, and the like. But pastas can be completely light and still flavorful when dressed with little more than you would use to dress a salad.

That's what I did here when making this spaghetti with scallops and shrimp. The components for this "sauce," if you will, begin by flavoring olive oil in a saute pan. Then the seafood is added in at high heat to give it a nice sear. Once the pasta is al dente, it's transferred into the saute pan. A moment, first, on this step: The only time I ever drain my cooked pasta in a colander is when I'm making pasta salad. If I'm cooking up a pasta dish to serve right afterwards, I transfer the pasta with a slotted spoon into the olive oil-based sauce I've started off while the pasta has been boiling. Along with the transferred pasta comes some of the pasta cooking water. This liquid is full of fibrous starch - a key agent in thickening your olive oil pasta sauce - all without adding in unnecessary, flavor-masking thickening agents, like flour or butter.

The pasta gets a quick rotation in the sauce you've started off. This added heat also serves to finish cooking the al dente spaghetti. The seafood gets added back in. An added dash of parsley or basil brings the dish to life. And you'll be so satisfied, eating this out of a salad bowl, by how the salad and pasta can both start off with little more than olive oil, salt, lemon, garlic, and pepper - the simplest, age-old of salad dressings.

Serves 2
1 container spaghetti
1/4 pound shrimp (have the fish monger devein the shrimp; I like to leave on the tails for playful removing while eating)
1/4 pound bay scallops (the little kind - adorable and delicious)
1 pinch red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 lemon, juiced and zested
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and freshly-cracked pepper
roughly chopped basil or parsley

- Set a pasta pot off to a rolling boil with water and a pinch of salt.
- In a large saute pan, drop in olive oil at medium-high heat.
- Lightly rinse seafood in a colander and dry on a paper towel.
- Drop seafood in and spread out in the saute pan to sear. Let cook on each side for 1 1/2 minutes, or until shrimp are light pink.
- Remove from pan and set aside.
- In the same saute pan, on medium heat, season your oil with salt, lemon zest, and chile flakes, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add in sliced garlic and take off of the heat.
(The reason you want to take the pan off of the heat at this point is because the garlic and chile flakes can easily burn and become bitter. Within the heated olive oil, which also has the flavor of seafood, their flavors will now gently seep, with no danger of burning)
- Once the pasta is done cooking (about 9 minutes for al dente - try a piece to make sure!), add into the saute pan.
- Add in about 2 tbsp. of the pasta cooking liquid.
- Add in lemon juice and seafood, and let simmer for 3 minutes at low heat.
- Turn with tongs to coat pasta with seasonings.
- Add in fresh herbs and serve into salad bowls to enjoy your salad-dressed pasta, guilt free.