'Crab' and Rocket Linguine - under a fiver

When doing my meal plans this week, I came across a recipe for crab and rocket linguine. It looked delicious, promising a balance of sharp and sweet flavours. The problem is that even tinned crabmeat is out of my budget at the moment, so I decided to adapt the recipe to something more in my price range.

Just like the original recipe, this meal has a peppery kick from the rocket, a zing from the lemon zest, and the seafood sticks, tomatoes and creme fraiche add sweetness. All in all, it was delicious and certainly didn't taste 'budget'. Also contains 2 portions of your 5-a-day.

per person:
100g pasta - I used a mix of tagliatelle and spaghetti to finish off odd packets. (10p)
olive oil for cooking (10p)
1 large garlic clove, minced (5p)
2 tbsp half-fat creme fraiche (40p)
6ish seafood sticks, ripped into strips (30p)
handful of rocket, chopped roughly (30p)
zest from half a lemon (15p for half lemon)
5 cherry tomatoes, halved. (20p)
salt and pepper to season

Total: £1.50 per person (prices estimated from used percentage of item, costed at tesco, value range if available)
If you were making this for 4, you could use less garlic and lemon, and it'd definitely come in under a fiver.

cook pasta in water
cook minced garlic in olive oil until soft, then stir in the creme fraiche, tomatoes, rocket, zest and seafood sticks.
heat gently until warmed through. Drain the pasta and stir in.
Season with salt and pepper as necessary.
Garnish with a couple extra rocket leaves.

I also sprinkled Parmesan cheese over mine as I happened to have bought some for a risotto this week.

All in all, including chopping it took less than 15 mins and very little washing up (always a bonus!)

Worth noting that even with my substitutions, this is a 'luxury' dinner for me - creme fraiche and rocket are not usually on my shopping list, but I factored them into my mealplan, planning to use the rest of the packets elsewhere this week.

Whenever I use lemons, I try to get the most out of every part of it. Juice is squeezed and used or frozen to be used later and then the remaining outer pith and skin is quartered and used to de-scale my kettle (simply pop them in with a full kettle of water, boil and leave overnight). Lemon juice can be used for cleaning, but with pancake day approaching fast, I might just freeze the juice to use then.