The zucchini in this recipe also acts as a replacement for some of the linguini so you’re increasing the vegetables and lowering the amount of simple carbs all in one swoop. To be honest I’m much more about the increasing the vegetables than worrying about carbs!

The flavours of this pasta are so fresh – lemon, chilli, fennel and parsley all work in harmony to compliment the ocean fresh taste of the mussels. Mussels are an amazingly sustainable and nutrient rich source of protein. They are usually organic, farmed sustainably and usually inexpensive. Not to mention being a good source of iron, zinc and healthy fats. You can read more about why you should be eating them here!

They also taste great and are super quick and easy to cook. 1 kg of them will easily feed 4, and they cook in mere minutes making them an ideal week night meal. I love them tossed through a pasta, you can pop them out of their shells before returning them to the pan in the last step, I like to keep at least a few in the shell for presentation. Make sure you clean the shells before cooking them as the liquid they cook in will become your sauce.

The pasta finishes cooking in the sauce in this recipe in order to thicken the sauce with the starch from the pasta. This makes for a sauce that lightly coats the pasta. the trick is to drain the pasta a minute before you normally would so when it still has an extra little bite to it. The zucchini noodles are only tossed through at the end as the heat of the pasta is enough to get them to the al dente point you want them at. More heat than that leads to sloppy zoodles. No one wants that!

I love this served with a big salad and some crusty bread to soak up the sauce, I told you I wasn’t worried about the carbs!

Ingredients

200g linguini

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 fennel bulb, halved and then finely sliced (reserve the fronds)

2 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 shallots or 1/2 cup finely chopped spring onion (green part only for fructose friendly)

1 kg mussels, debearded and shells cleaned

2/3 cup dry white wine

2 zucchini, spiralized into noodles

1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsely

salt and pepper to taste.

Directions

Fill a large pot with salted water and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, heat a wok or large deep fry pan over medium high heat and once hot add the oil. Then add the fennel onion, garlic and chilli and cook until the onion and fennel have softened and are just starting to colour.

Add the pasta to your boiling water and cook until just under al dente, you want a bit of bite left for the final step. When drianing reserve a cup of cooking water

Add the wine to this pan and then add the mussels. Cover and steam for a few minutes or until the shells have opened. You can remove the mussels as the shells open and at the 5 minute mark you can discard remaining unopened mussels. You can remove at least 1/2 of the mussels from their shells and set all aside at this point.

Add the almost cooked pasta to the sauce in the bottom of the pan along with 1/4 cup of the starchy pasta water. Toss to coat, it should be quite saucy, if it’s dry add more pasta water. The starch in this water will help thicken and coat the sauce and the pasta is going to finish cooking in this as it simmers. Simmer for 2 minutes or until al dente.

Add the mussels, zucchini, lemon zest and juice, parsley and parmesan to the large pan and toss to coat. Add more pasta water if you need to. Season with salt and black pepper and dig in.

HH. x