Tag Archives: prawns

Pork and prawn noodle stirfry with lots of veg

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This dish is a rare thing in our house, something which is healthy and which everyone likes. Granted, my youngest picks out the prawns, but otherwise we all eat this and it’s insane the amount of veg we seem to consume without complaining.

You can make this with any sort of noodle – cooked separately and added at the latter stages. If you use soba – which I do, sometimes – cook them carefully and rinse in cold water before adding, as otherwise they stick together. I do have ‘straight to wok’ noodles in the cupboard for this dish as it makes the whole thing ludicruously easy. Other than the chopping – which you could do in advance.

It’s adapted from a Delicious magazine recipe. I add more veg and omit the chillies.

You’ll need

Two teaspoons of olive oil

300g of free range, good pork mince

Three quarters of a teaspoon of Chinese five spice powder

Two and a half teaspoons of curry powder

180g (I confess here I just tend to add whatever the packet contains) prawns – if raw cook them for a bit longer, until pink. If already cooked add at the end as stipulated.

About 150g carrots which I julienne, but you can slice thinly

(a red chilli if you want to use it)

300g or thereabouts of ready cooked or straight to wok noodles

250g pak choi or other green veg – I find very thinly sliced button hole kale is really good here

2 courgettes, julienned or thinly sliced

Four spring onions, sliced thinly

One and a half tablespoons of soy sauce

This is what you do

Have everything ready for one and don’t make the mistake I did first time round…

Heat the oil in a wok on high, cook the pork mince for about 2-3 minutes, until browned. Now turn the heat down and add the spices, stir fry and cook for a couple more minutes.

Now add the veg in the order it takes to cook. So I add the green veg first, cook for a couple of minutes with the prawns if raw, then the carrots, courgettes and finally the prawns if they are already cooked. (Add the chilli here if you are using it, it should be thinly sliced.) Stir fry everything for a minute or two.

Then add the ready cooked noodles with two tablespons of water and the spring onions and just before you serve  – which is immediately – you add the soy sauce.

This feeds four big eaters, slightly more if you are more restrained about it.

 

A simple paella

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Spanish folk: don’t judge me too harshly. I know this isn’t authentic. But it’s still delicious.

I first ate paella when I went to Spain with my homegirls, aged 18. What a holiday we had. Insane. Six girls in a non-tourist region of Spain…there was this little restaurant which made absolutely fantastic paella. And chips. The best chips and the best paella. I absolutely adore dishes that you can eat with just a folk, and not have to worry about gristle or bones or fat or nasty bits. Okay so we did have to shell the huge prawns that sat atop their rice deathbed, but stuff like that doesn’t scare me. This recipe doesn’t use shell on prawns so you can sit, cross-legged on the sofa and eat this with one hand, preferably with a fork in it.

Before this, I had never attempted to make paella at home. It seemed so scary, and it involved paella pans that you had to treat with love and care, lest they rust. Then I saw this recipe in Donna Hay’s Simple Dinners and we made it and we loved it. My children aren’t so mad on it, but the beauty of this dish (and oh there are so many beauties to it) is that you can pick out the bits you don’t like and eat those you do.

This is the perfect dish for when you don’t really know what to eat (meat? fish?) and don’t have much time, but still want something relatively healthy and comforting. If you ate everything in it you could get those ‘seafood pie’ mixes from the frozen compartments.  We don’t because my partner can’t eat bi-valves and those things usually have tons of mussels in them. But we did, as sharp eyed readers may note, add squid rings into this one.

Don’t be tempted to use chicken breast meat, it’s all about the tasty thigh meat here.

What you need for four good portions:

1 red onion which you have sliced

1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes (leave out for those that don’t like it)

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

Half or so of a chorizo, it really depends how much you like it and what you’ve got

4-6 chicken thighs, de-boned, skin off, made all nice so you can just eat them without fear of scary stuff and cut into bite-sized chunks

250g short grain rice (no expensive paella rice, you don’t need it, but it must be short grain not wild or basmati or anything healthy, save that for another time)

1 litre of chicken stock

A quantity of raw prawns, again depends how much you like them. We use about 150g

A handful of coriander leaves, chopped up

200g or so of cherry tomatoes, halved

Lemon wedges

What you do:

Heat a large, deep non-stick frying pan over a good strong heat. add the onion, chilli if using, paprika and chorizo and cook for 3-5 minutes until it’s all golden looking. Now add the chicken and cook for five minutes, turning it so that all sides get lightly browned. Add the rice and stir until all coated, now add the stock and bring to the boil and cook for ten minutes. Add the prawns and cook for a further five minutes until they are pink and the rice is tender. Serve with the coriander sprinkled on top and the cherry tomatoes and a lemon wedge each.