Garlic Prawn Pasta

When you run a food blog, friends (and sometimes family) have the impression that you cook and eat well all the time. "... but I keep seeing all those mouth-watering photos, you must be a kitchen goddess!" Truth is, we're just like most working couple out there and there are times when I'm too tired to even consider washing a spoon or mug as the result of a homemade beverage. Home only late in the evening, exhausted from work/commute/gym (or the combination of all that) more often than not sends me straight to the nearest chair, while food may be very well the center of my immediate attention, the oven or stove would be the last thing I'd want to go near. Then there are days we order in when there's no reason not to - Singapore being a small island - delivery services are excellent and choices are much more varied than just pizza, fast food or Indian.

While we're normal like that, recently, both of us found ourselves in the kitchen more often between Monday to Friday, complete with tired cleaning up actions after whipping up quick but homemade and healthy dinners. There came a point where even for Vijay, the disenchantment with mediocre outside food trumped his many excuses not to slice an onion or scrub a frying pan. So as I started to make shakes and egg noodles for our evening meal instead of picking up the phone, he mastered the art of al dente pasta in under 10 minutes instead of going downstairs to the hawker stall (which in more than one occasion had driven him up the wall getting his orders wrong).

Now, as we run along this path of salted boiling water and swimming strands of Italian noodles, there's no need to resort to bottled processed sauces or canned seafood. Going through the entire season of Australia's queen of food styling's debut TV series during my business trip in Shanghai, this recipe was quickly mentally bookmarked to tickle my other half's new found love for prawns treated right. Yes, you'd have noticed it's not exactly chopping board to plate in 10 minutes if you include the time to clean, peel and slice the prawns but really, that's the only tedious job required here. The result, trust me, will be worth the trouble.

Garlic Prawn Pasta [Printer Friendly Version]

Adapted barely from Donna Hay's Garlic Prawn Pasta from her show Fast, Fresh and Simple.
Serves 2

Note: Since this is fast, fresh and simple, there's hardly any need to measure anything - I used the juice and zest of one lemon and added the rest of the ingredients roughly. Who wants to wash more spoons/cup and whip out a weighing scale when already lazy? If you're using spaghetti or other pasta, adjust the cooking time accordingly.

• 200 grams angel hair pasta
  
• 50 grams butter
  
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 5 cloves garlic, sliced
  
• 2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
  
• 1 tablespoon shredded lemon zest
  
• 12 (raw) prawns (shrimp), peeled, cleaned and halved lengthways
  
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  
• ¼ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly torn
  
• sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water for 3–4 minutes or until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the butter and oil and cook until the butter has melted. Add the garlic, chilli and zest and cook for about 2 minutes.

Add the prawns and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until the prawns are tender. Turn off heat. Drain and add the pasta, lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper to the pan and toss to combine. Serve warm.

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