Spaghetti Con Gamberetti e Rucola

What is it with kids and spaghetti?  They love it, mine would happily eat nothing but "persketti" for the rest of their lives.  Just the mere mentioned of the word and they are jumping up and down on the spot and I even couldn't keep them away from this - I called it "grown ups persketti" in the hope that they wouldn't be yanking the knife and fork out of my hand but it was no use. I was still mugged for my dinner.

This is spaghetti with prawns and rocket for those of us who are not up to speed with the Italian lingo and it comes from Jamie Oliver's "Jamie's Italy" book that was published back in 2005.

As always I was on the hunt for something that could be quickly rustled up after work and this sounded simple and tasty so I thought I'd give it a try.  The ingredients sounded right up my street and I figured if I could just get Mr M to overlook the rocket part he'd be fine. (My way round this is just to not tell him what I am cooking - he's then so hungry by the time it's ready, he'd eat roadkill).

We LOVED this. I can't tell you how much.  It's all so simple and unfussy - so much so that I thought maybe it woud be a bit bland or boring but it was delicious! I really enjoy a huge plate of pasta, there's something so satisfying, and this just pressed all my buttons.  I will be making this again, and again, and again until we're so fed up of it even hearing the name of this dish will send us running for the hills.

I felt I must share this with you so here it is. This recipe serves 4.

Spaghetti Con Gamberetti e Rucola

Ingredients

455g dried spaghetti

sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled & finely chopped

1-2 dried red chillies, crumbled

400g cooked and peeled prawns

1 small glass of white wine

2 heaped tbsps of sun-dried tomato puree (or 6 sun-dried tomatoes blitzed in a blender).

zest and juice of 1 lemon

2 handfuls of rocket, roughly chopped

Method

Cook the spaghetti (according to pack) in a large pan of boiling water. (Jamie says salted but I rarely add salt when cooking pasta). 

Heat three tbsps of extra virgin olive oil in a large pan and toss in the chilli and garlic.  Once the garlic begins to colour slightly add the white wine and the sun-dried tomato puree and simmer for a few minutes to reduce the liquid slightly.  Throw in the prawns and simmer for a few more minutes until they are heated through.

When the spaghetti is ready, drain it in a colander.  Reserve some of the cooking liquid as you may want to use this to loose the sauce a bit.   Mix the spaghetti with the sauce, add the lemon juice and half of the chopped rocket.  (This is the point to add some of the reserved water if you wish to do so).  Have a little taste and add some salt and pepper now if you feel like it needs it.

Divide between flour plates and top with the grated lemon zest and remaining rocket.

Now, I couldn't find any dried red chillies on this occasion so I just used some Schwartz dried flaked chillies and it was fine.  I also used cooked prawns as that was what I had in the fridge but Jamie's original recipe uses raw prawns so I have adjusted the method slightly because of this.

I served this with some garlic tear'n'share bread and wolfed it down faster than the speed of light!

Enjoy!

love & kisses

Mrs M x