Easy Entertaining Meal: Donna Hay's Garlic Prawn Pasta

Easy Entertaining is this week's theme. With many American households preparing elaborate turkey and/or ham dinners with a gazilion side dishes, wouldn't it be nice to have something that wasn't turkey prior to days upon end of eating it as leftovers? Yes, I think it would. If you are a seafood lover, this may be for you. Garlic, shrimp and pasta.....simple yet delicious foods when combined.

It seems the rest of the world know shrimp as prawns. Whenever Nigella, Jamie, Gordon and Donna speak of what I know as shrimp, they say prawn. This caused me to look into the history of the term. Here is what I found out from Help With Cooking:

The terms "prawn" and "shrimp" are often used interchangeably and it does depend on where you live, as to which term will be used. The terms "prawns" and "shrimps" are used in cookbooks, restaurants and markets, but not necessarily correctly. Believe it or not, there is actually a difference between prawns and shrimps. Prawns legs are longer than shrimps and the shrimp's front pair of pincers is larger, whilst the prawns second pair of pincers is bigger. Prawns are similar to lobster, as they have two pairs of small pincers but due to the fact that they are similar in size to shrimps, they are sometimes confused with them.

So now I know. But to be honest, I would eat either one without needing distinction of it’s true nature. They are just so delicious! Here are some wonderful garlic shrimps served with pasta...and white wine of course!




Garlic Prawn Pasta
From Fresh, Fast Simple cookbook
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Ingredients
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8 to 10 ounces (200g) angel hair pasta or spaghetti
3 tablespoons (45grams) butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 teaspoon dried chili flakes
1 tablespoon shredded lemon zest
12 large (raw) prawns (shrimp), peeled, cleaned and halved length-ways (I used 3/4 pound)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
¼ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly torn
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Method

Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water for 8–10 minutes or until al dente. Drain and keep warm.

While the pasta is cooking, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the butter and oil and cook until the butter has melted.
Add the garlic, chili and zest and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the prawns/ shrimp and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until the prawns are tender.
Add the pasta, juice, parsley, salt and pepper to the pan and toss to combine.



Serve with a simple green salad.

Would you like to see a short video of Donna Hay preparing this dish? Check it out HERE



Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and family. I don't know what this year's celebration will be like for us but, you can sure we will eat well. It's a busy time of year for many people - I am hoping that won't be true in our case. Chillin' out with extra days off work. Yep.