Cooking in self catering accomodation is a bit of an art. You need to make do with a (usually) ill equipped kitchen with blunt knives, not enough saucepans and a non existent pantry so you need to make maximum flavour with minimum ingredients. I called this Handful Prawn Pasta because that was how I measured everything out, using delicious prawns from Canarvon WA (well up the coast from Perth, but still fresh and so sweet), local colourful tomatoes, breadcrumbs made from my woodfired loaf of bread, along with parsley, garlic and lemon. Simple and delicious. Pangrattato is also known as poor mans breadcrumbs, but there is nothing poor about it! It is a great way to use up old bread and add flavour and crunch to a simple pasta dish. Lemon, garlic and parsley are common additions, and chilli is also delicious too.
Ingredients
- A handful of green prawns each (peeled and de-pooped)
- A big handful of baby tomatoes each, roughly chopped into chunks
- 1 slice of bread each, torn into small bread crumbs
- 1 clove of garlic each
- 1 lemon (using the zest and juice)
- 1 chilli (or to taste)
- small handful of parsley, finely chopped
- pasta
Method
- Get your pasta water boiling (speed tip is use boiled water from the kettle, much quicker!). Put your pasta in and start cooking it, the rest of the dinner will take about as long as your pasta cooks.
- In a warm frypan, add a (very) generous glug of olive oil and cook your breadcrumbs and chilli until the breadcrumbs are almost golden. Add the garlic and parsley right at the end and cook for a further minute or two before stirring through the lemon zest and putting the pangrattato into a bowl.
- Add more olive oil back in the frypan and throw in your tomatoes. Cook until they blister and start to create a sauce. Reserve a cup of your pasta cooking liquid just in case you need it to “spin out” your pasta sauce.
- When your pasta is a couple of minutes away from being done, add your prawns to the tomatoes and cook until they just turn white. Drain the pasta and chuck it in the fry pan too, along with a squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper and a bit of the pasta cooking water if you need it. You could also add baby spinach at this point for a bit of extra green.
- Serve with a mound of the pangrattato on top… enjoy!
