Simple Frutti de Mare

This isn't a real frutti de mare by any stretch. For one, I skip a lot of steps that are important to making sure the quality of everything is what it should be. That said, a lot of the time I need to cook something simply, so that it doesn't take a lot of actual interaction time (even if it takes a fair bit of simmering time).

Part of the secret here is that Trader Joe's carries an impressive one pound bag of frozen mixed seafood -- shrimp, calimari, octopus and scallops -- for about six bucks. Normally I use this in stir fry with oyster sauce, but I've not done a lot of stir fry of late. And today I wanted pasta.

The other secret here is that I have a basic go-to tomato sauce that I use as the basis of at least a dozen different dishes. I change it up just a little depending upon the needs of the dish. That go-to recipe exists thanks entirely to Mark Bittman, whose "How To Cook Everything" really is a phenomenal book for not only explaining how to cook everything, but what it is about the food you're cooking that really matters. Also, this is a pantry food; I can make this entirely from ingredients that I keep around at all times, either in the freezer or in the pantry.

Finally, the exact bits I used here are because I had to do last minute rebalancing because I underestimated how much liquid is in the seafood.

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