Orecchiette With Garlic Prawns & Spinach

Some of the best things in life are the simplest, and that is certainly the case with this orecchiette with garlic prawns. A recipe of such simplicity yet such depth of flavour that it will instantly hook you and become one of your favourites. It’s a real showstopper pasta dish.

This is the latest in our series of tasty recipes that feature just 7 simple ingredients. They are all super tasty and can be made by people of any cooking ability.

The key is to buy good, big fresh prawns and carefully doing all the peeling of the prawns during the preparation. It makes eating the pasta less messy, and a real pleasure.

Orecchiette With Garlic Prawns: Ingredients

Orecchiette
Spinach
Butter
Fresh prawns
Lemons
Onions
Garlic

You could cook the prawns whole, but doing the hard work in advance lends to a much more enjoyable eating experience! Start by removing the head from the prawn.

Next, gently peel off the skin. You should be left with nothing but pure flesh.

Place the pasta on to boil with a pinch of salt in the water.

Peel the garlic and the onions and dice them up as small as you possibly can. Also zest the outer skin of the lemon using a grater. You want to make sure to only get the yellow part, and not cut through to the bitter white rind.

Heat up a large frying pan on a low heat and add the garlic, onions and lemon zest. You want to very gently cook these to extract the flavours.

After several minutes, add in the prawns and cook them from about 2 minutes on each side until they are fully pink.

Turn up the heat slightly and add the juice of the lemon.

Add a couple of knobs of butter. If you were being super luxurious at this stage you could also add in a glass of white wine…

Add in the strain and cooked pasta when the butter has frothed up.

Finish the dish by adding in the spinach. It won’t take more than 20-30 seconds to wilt down, so you can take it straight off the heat as soon as you’ve added it to the pan.