Prawn and passata linguine
For the nights when the freezer prawns are the plan
Doubles for two in the same pan. The sauce keeps a day in the fridge without the prawns. Add them fresh when you reheat it.
This is the dish for the evenings when the only realistic ambition is a pan and ten minutes. Grated garlic cooked down to nothing in butter, a good measure of passata simmered until it loses its raw edge, and the prawns dropped in at the very end so they turn pink and stay tender rather than tightening into rubber. Nothing is scattered over the top and nothing green goes near it, which is the whole design. Buy prawns already peeled and keep a bag of them in the freezer, and this becomes a dinner that exists whether or not you managed to plan for it.
Ingredients
Contains: Gluten, Crustaceans, Milk
- 90 glinguine, white, not wholewheat
- 20 gunsalted butter
- 1 clovegarlic, peeled and finely grated
- 200 mlpassata
- salt
- 150 gprawns, peeled, thawed if frozen, any shell fragments removed
Method
Bring a pan of well-salted water to the boil and cook the linguine for a minute longer than the packet says, until fully tender. Scoop out a mugful of the cooking water before you drain it.
While the pasta cooks, melt the butter in a wide frying pan over a low heat. Add the garlic and cook gently for a minute, until it smells sweet and has softened into the butter without taking any colour.
Stir in the passata and a good pinch of salt, turn the heat up slightly, and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, until it has thickened a little and lost its raw, sharp smell.
Add the prawns and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until they turn pink all the way through and feel firm to the touch. Do not let them cook much longer or they turn tough.
Drain the pasta and toss it through the sauce with a splash of the reserved water, until well coated. Eat straight away.
Watch-points
- Use passata rather than chopped or whole tomatoes, so there is no skin or seed in the sauce.
- Grate the garlic rather than slicing it, so nothing is left in the sauce as a piece, and cook it soft before the passata goes in.
- Nothing goes over the finished bowl. No chopped herbs, no chilli, no grinds of pepper.
- Buy prawns already peeled, and check them over for any last fragments of shell.
- Use white linguine, not a wholewheat or spelt version.
Stoma note: The linguine underneath does the settling here. White pasta firms output up rather than loosening it, which suits an unpredictable evening.
Make it more nourishing
- Stir a tablespoon of double cream or crème fraîche into the sauce at the end for a rounder, richer finish.
- Use 180 g of prawns instead of 150 for a more generous, higher-protein plate.
- Finish with an extra 15 g of butter stirred through off the heat.
Swaps
- Instead of prawns, use flaked, skinned white fish or salmon
- add it raw to the sauce for the last few minutes so it poaches gently rather than breaking apart
- Instead of linguine, use any white pasta shape
- the sauce coats a long strand best, but a short shape works too