Spaghetti ei Gamberi

You do know that a name for a pasta dish in Italian always sounds better right? Doesn't Pasta Gamberi sound so much better than Prawn Pasta with Roasted Garlic and Mushroom Sauce? I think it does!

So anyway, you'd have figured out that I made a Prawn Pasta in a Roasted Garlic and Mushroom Sauce. The Lovely Wife had bought some prawns from the market and had planned to fry them up as the kids just love fried prawns.

Since I haven't made any new pasta for a while, I decided to make a meal out of the prawns and came up with the quick yet very tasty dish. I had originally planned to just make my aglio olio and then stir fry the prawns and add it in. However, seeing that there were mushrooms available as well, I decided to use mushrooms together with the prawns for a nice mix of earthiness and sea produce!

Mushrooms and prawns by themselves would be nice but there wouldnt be enough of a sauce unless I doused the whole thing in a lot of olive oil. I've always loved the taste of Roasted Garlic especially when it is ground down into a sauce. I contemplated using some cream as well but decided that I would just keep the flavours as natural as possible. So this is what I did:

Ingredients

2 heads of garlic
500g prawns, shelled and deveined
250g Button Mushrooms - quartered
1 large onion - chopped
2 tsps basil
2 tsps oregano
1 tsp Corn Flour
Black Pepper



Method
Cut the end of the head of garlic and place cut side up in a small heatproof bowl. Drizzle with Olive Oil and bake in a 180C oven for about 20 minutes or till garlic is soft. Allow to cool before removing the skin and setting the roasted garlic cloves aside.
Heat a little olive oil and sautee the basil, oregano and black pepper. Add in the onion and cook till onion is soft. Add in the mushrooms and continue cooking till mushrooms release their juices. Process the garlic gloves with about a Tbsp of Olive Oil to get a nice paste. Add in a little water if needed. Pour into the mushroom mixture and mix well. Add in the prawns and simmer till prawns turn a nice pink. If required, add in some water to help cook the prawns. Add in salt to season. Thicken with the Corn Flour mixed in a little water if required. Toss in cooked pasta and serve.

While the sauce was simmering, I called in my princess who has now become one of my 'official taste testers'. She took one sip of the sauce and when her eyes lit up I knew I had hit on a winning sauce. She couldn't wait for lunch to be ready and kept asking when she could eat!

Needless to say, both the kids devoured the pasta and The Lovely Wife agreed that it was very tasty. A few 'snide' comments were passed that I should make new dishes more often too!

I really liked the flavours of this pasta sauce and its the kind of pasta that you can just eat and eat. You can add in some chilli flakes if you want some added zing too.

So once again, another succesful pasta endeavour and as I usually do for all my pasta escapades, I'm submitting this to my dear friend Ruth from Once Upon a Feast who is the brain behind and is also hosting Presto Pasta Nights this week. I haven't submitted anything at PPN for quite a while now so its nice to be back. Hope you all like it - we certainly did!!