Pasta prawns, calamari and cherry tomatoes

  "A proper Italian seafood pasta would claim for mussels or clams, which would add a lot more trouble... This simplified version takes half the time and it's still delicious."

 

Ingredients

• 500g pasta (Penne, Fusilli or Spaghetti/Linguine)
• 2 calamari (200/350g)
• 250g fresh or frozen king prawns
• 300g cherry tomatoes
• 1 or 2 garlic cloves
• small dried chilli (optional)
• 1/4 glass of white wine
• 5g of fresh parsley (flat leaf or curly) - finely chopped
• olive oil for cooking
• extra virgin olive oil for serving
• salt/pepper 
• coarse salt (for the water) 

Tools

• 26cm/28cm saucepan with lid
• 5 litres pot
• good kitchen knife and chopping board
• colander
• wooden spoon

Preparation

• Fill up a big pot (5 Litres) to 3/4 with water and put on medium/high heat
• Pour 3 table spoons of cooking olive oil in the frying pan and add the peeled garlic and dried chilli (if you like it a bit hot)
• Clean and cut the calamari in disks (about 0.5cm wide)
• Wash and cut the cherry tomatoes in halves
• Chop the parsley leaves finely

Cooking

• Put the frying pan on medium heat
• Let the garlic brown a little and add the calamari
• When the calamari is cooked (after 2/3 minutes), add the 1/4 glass of white wine
• Let the wine reduce a little (5 minutes)
• Add cherry tomatoes and prawns (whether fresh or frozen)
• Cover and let cook for 5/7 minutes
• Add salt and pepper to taste
• When the cherry tomatoes have lost their original consistency and the liquid in the sauce is a bit thicker, add the parsley, stir, let cook for another minutes and turn off the heat 
• When the water boils, add 4/5 teaspoons of coarse salt (about 1 per litre of water/100g of pasta)
• Drop the pasta in the water and stir - check the cooking time!
• When the pasta is ready, drain it well and add it to the saucepan whilst stirring well to mix

Serving

• Add a spoon of extra virgin olive oil and some freshly ground pepper to each plate

Tips

You can buy fresh calamari from a fishmonger, they are cheap and they clean it for you. Just wash off the skin and chop it at home. Fresh prawns are good, but pricy. Frozen raw prawns are usually very good as well and easy to find. Avoid super cheap cherry tomatoes, you can get a nice punnet for less than £2 in any market. The trick? The fresh parsley and the extra virgin olive oil + ground pepper on the serving plate, that's what makes all the difference!