Posie’s Place

If you are wondering where Pam is, she’s over at my place cooking there, so I thought I’d keep her stove warm here.

Pam and I decided to surprise our readers with a Blog Swop. We discovered, in our virtual friendship, that we have a few things in common and really took a liking to each other. One thing we both love is Jamie Oliver and his current Jamie’s Italy. The recipes are all fantastic! That is why it was rather difficult for me to decide what could I cook for Pam!

At first I thought of making something sweet but then decided to go with this recipe:

Spaghetti con Gamberetti e Rucola - Spaghetti with jumbo prawns and rucola.

I had a few great ideas how I could photograph the prawns ;-)!

I did make one or two very minor changes to the recipe though. For example instead of using white wine I used vegetable stock (I have a 3 1/2 half year old son and substitute stock for alcohol). I used normal tomato paste and chopped up sun dried tomatoes into the sauce. Jamie recommends using paste from sun dried tomatoes or puréeing 6 sun dried tomatoes into a paste. Instead of lemon juice and zest I used limes. Those were my only changes otherwise I tried to stick to the recipe as much as I could ;-)!

I hope you liked our little surprise and enjoy this great tasting recipe.

• 500g Spaghetti - try getting some fresh pasta if you can, it always taste much better
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 400g large jumbo prawns
• good extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves - finely chopped
• 1-2 dried red chili - broken into flakes
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 6 - 8 sun dried tomatoes - chopped coarsely
• zest and juice from 1 lime
• 2 handfuls of rucola - chopped coarsely

Add some of the olive oil in a large pan and heat. Add the garlic and sauté. Jamie recommends to also add the chilies at this point and sauté with the garlic but as I am cooking for a child I always add the spice later. When the garlic starts to take on a nice color, put in the prawns and fry for approx. 1 minute. Now, add the stock (or wine) with the tomato paste and chopped sun dried tomatoes. And allow to simmer for a few minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook the spaghetti according to instructions. Once these are ready drain, saving some cooking water for the sauce. Pour this into the sauce until it has you preferred consistency. Now you can take a small portion out if you are also cooking for kids and in the rest add the chilies. Throw in the spaghetti in both sauces and mix well. Pour the lime juice and add some of the chopped rucola. Quickly serve on individual plates sprinkling, a bit of the zest and the rest of rucola over the pasta.

Verdict:

This was just delicious. Soeren once again thought the prawns were chicken. I wanted to explain to him that these were prawns but as I have a very inquisitive son he would have wanted to see what they look like in real. Well, I thought I would save that for another day. He enjoyed the dish very much … after all all kids love pasta. This is a nice variation to the usual pasta and tomato sauce or the famous bolognese! Of course it is a finer type dish and therefore perfect for when you have guest over.

Tom (my better half), has being spoilt the last few days as I have been cooking for a few blog events since the weekend! He loved the slightly limey taste this had and with the prawns he just relished the pasta. For some reason we did not talk much at the dinner table! I wonder why?

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