Easy, but Luxurious: Turnip and Crab Pasta Makes a Great Weeknight Dinner

This easy weeknight pasta comes together in less than fifteen minutes, yet it makes for a cheerful and luxurious dish that's worthy of a holiday dinner party. The combination of briny crab with the sweet tender turnips is irresistible, and by using the young turnip greens, they not only add festive color, they also add a wonderful hint of mustard to the dish.

The sauce is simply vegetable stock, but by emulsifying it with butter, the fat adds some thickness to the sauce, allowing it to coat each strand of pasta like chocolate on a candybar. Because the crab is already cooked it gets added at the very end with the pasta and some cheese, and it's all tossed together to marry the flavors.

One of the best things about this pasta is that it works great with whatever seafood is fresh and in season, along with a flavorful vegetable. For example, if you make a shrimp and broccoli rabe pasta, just fry the shrimp along with the cabbage at the beginning. I didn't add any garlic to this because I didn't want it to overwhelm the delicate flavor of the crab and turnips, but other seafood combinations could lend themselves well to the addition of some garlic or lemon zest.