PRAWNS AGAIN

Last night I decided to go Chinese with my dinner. I had some raw king prawns that needed to be used. I soaked some egg noodles in boiling water for 3 or 4 mins, then strained them and refreshed in cold water. I sliced some red onion, red pepper and topped and tailed some sugar snap peas. For the main event I stir fried the prawns for around a minute and removed from the wok. Then threw the peppers into the wok, stir-fried for 2mins then added the onion and sugar snap peas fried for another minute and now throw in the noodles. Keep everything moving or else they'll burn and stick. To this mixture I added a couple of teaspoons of Sweet Chilli Sauce (I use Blue Dragon) and 3tsps of Ketchap manis which is a sweeter soy sauce from Indonesia (if you don't have any use light soy sauce instead) and around 30mls of water. Let this mixture bubble away for a few mins until the sauce is syrupy and thick. To this add the prawns to heat through. Serve immediately. There is no need to add any salt to this mixture though I did add a few grounds of black pepper, but that's only because I love black pepper.

The above measurements are for a single serving. You can find Ketchap Manis in Tesco with all the other ethnic foods.

Mr. Chops didn't partake in my meal, he had a fish finger sandwich. Now that's living!!

TIS BEEN BAD FOOD WEEK

Didn't do too much cooking this week. Other than a Thai-noodle soup with prawns from Nigel Slater's new programme on BBC2. Mr. Chops isn't a fan of Thai food while I adore it. I love the heat of it and that little touch of sweetness in the background. You can find his recipe on the BBC food website bbc.co.uk/food, there's a link to his show.

I've become obsessed with prawns recently. Tesco were doing an offer on frozen raw king prawns so I stocked up on a good few bags. Of course, I never remember to take them out to defrost overnight so my little tip is to put them in tightly shut plastic bag and let sit in very cold water for an hour or so. If you think of it, change the cold water a couple of times but they won't be sitting in it for that long so its not entirely necessary. Turn the bag around every now and then and eventually you'll have perfectly safe-to-use defrosted prawns. The Tesco prawns are pretty tasty too, nice and meaty.

Another fall-back cupboard dinner is pasta with olive oil, garlic and chilli. If you've a fresh chilli near the end of its life hanging around, you can use it, otherwise I used dried chilli flakes. All you need to do is cook your choice of pasta, then while its draining, use the same pot to heat up a good splash of olive oil with a very finely chopped garlic clove and a sprinkling of chilli flakes - more or less depending on how much heat you like. Just make sure the garlic doesn't burn. Add the cooked pasta to the oil mix and give it a good stir. Check for seasoning, but definitely add some fresh ground black pepper. For a final flourish add some grated parmesan, then serve. Literally from pan to plate in 15mins max! Mr. Chops likes it and he's usually not one for plain pasta, he likes a little texture added. If you have it, you could add some roughly chopped chorizo to the pan with the garlic.