This Beats Going Out For Date Night And It's Cheaper

I'm about to prove that this recipe beats going out for dinner. It takes 25 minutes to make. It's cheaper than a starter or appetizer. It's perfect for date night and it serves two. Start with the garlic. We're going to need four cloves. You can just push the side of a knife down to crush them and then just go through and chop these up. Doesn't need to be perfect. Doesn't need to be super fine. You can also grate it or slice it if you prefer. But when you mince it like this, you get those really nice nutty pieces all throughout the dish. Like I said, doesn't need to be perfect. You pretty much want something that looks like this. I'm using a bit of flat leaf parsley. No specific weight, just a small handful. And this is going to be used in the pasta as well as as a garnish. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. Sometimes it can just be a pain to go out and buy a whole bunch of parsley to use a little bit. So only use it if you have it. But if you are trying to impress someone, definitely add it. Just adds that little bit of freshness to the dish. Now for the prawns, I've got 300 grams or 10.5 ounces of pilled and deveined prawns. These have been thawed out as well. What I'm going to do is just run my knife along the back of it. And this is going to open it up and create more surface area. When these reach that hot sear in the pan, they're going to spread out a lot more and they just look a lot better. You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but I'm going to go through and do that for all of these ones. If you do have prawns with the shell and head on, just do it exactly how you like it. Peel them, leave it all on. You can save all of the heads and the peels for a stock or even a bisque. Place it in the freezer and just get it out whenever you need it. I've put these on a tray because I want them sitting flat. That way we can go through and just pat these as dry as possible. Any moisture is going to kill a good sear and we don't want them to sear or stew in their own juices. We want to get that nice initial crust. You can season this however you like. Season it with your favorite spice mix, your favorite rub. I'm just going to add over a little bit of salt and pepper, just keeping it nice and simple. Mix that all through and when they're nicely coated, we can just pop these out of the way for a minute or so. One of my favorite things about this dish is the prep is so minimal and it takes as long to cook as it does to cook the pasta. So what we've got is a pot of water over a boil and we're going to generously season it with some salt. I've got 250 grams or 8.8 ounces of linguine here. You can use any pasta of your choice. We're just going to drop it in, let it sit for a minute to loosen up. Twist all of that in and we're going to cook this for about a minute less than the packet instructions. We want it to be nice and al dente. Just before you drain it, make sure you reserve about a cup of that pasta water as well. Now in the meantime, we'll get a large pan over a medium high heat. I'm going to add in one tablespoon of olive oil and add in 10 grams or 0.3 ounces of unsalted butter. Once the pan's nice and hot, we can then add in all of our prawns. Spread them out into a single layer so they're not sitting on top of one another. We're going to sear these for about a minute on each side. We don't want to overcook them and prawns can overcook incredibly fast. If you decide to use more prawns than this as well, I do recommend doing it in batches because like I said, we don't want these to steam. After a minute, we'll go through and flip these over. We're starting to get a nice bit of color on there and the prawns are also spiraling out from that initial cut that we did. And after about a minute on each side, you've got a beautiful color all over. What we're going to do is just remove these from the pan. Place the same pan back over a medium heat. I'm going to add in another 10 grams or 0.3 ounces of unsalted butter, allowing it to melt. Add in all of the garlic. Add about a quarter to a half teaspoon of chili flakes. It's completely optional. Gently mix all of that through. Just allow that garlic to simmer for about 45 seconds until it's nice and fragrant. Deglaze the pan with 125 milliliters of chicken stock or half a cup. You can also use white wine here if you prefer. Bring this up to a nice simmer. Let it rip any of that flavor that the prawns left behind from the bottom of the pan. We're going to cook this for about a minute to slightly reduce. Once it's thinned down slightly, you can run a spatula through it and it creates those ribbons. What we'll do is add in a half a cup or 125 milliliters of thickened cream. Keep it over a medium heat at this point and we're going to add in some Parmigiano-Reggiano, just grated on a microplane. The weights are roughly 25 grams or 0.9 ounces, but you can never really have too much cheese, so just add however much you like. All we need to do is just gently mix this through, allow that cheese to melt through the sauce. We're going to reduce this down for about two minutes, just until it becomes nice and thick. If you happen to reduce it too far, you can add a touch more stock to thin it down, but remember we've got that reserved pasta water as well, which will help with that. Can also season to taste with a touch of salt and about 10 cracks of black pepper. Once the sauce is reduced down, the pasta's been drained, we can then add it straight in. Add all of the prawns and any resting juices, and I'm going to add about two thirds of that flat-leaf parsley here as well, saving the rest for garnish. All we need to do is cook this for about a minute just to finish off that pasta. We'll reduce it down a little bit further, mix all of those ingredients together, and just allow everything to become friends. Once it's mixed through, we can start adding our pasta water in and just add enough to the consistency that you like and keep cooking it down until it's nice and thick. When you're happy with it, just double-check seasoning levels are correct. You can add a touch of lemon zest if you prefer. I'm going to leave it out for this one and then just serve it with a little bit of fresh lemon juice at the end. So with serving, you've got that delicious pasta that can go in first, just nice swirl in the middle of the bowl. Get your prawns in there as well and just stack them around however you like. I'm going to add a little bit more Parmesan cheese. I know some people do get funny about adding Parmesan to seafood, but it tastes absolutely delicious. And then with that remaining flat-leaf parsley, just a touch of freshness on the top. You can finish it off with a couple of cracks of black pepper as well. This looks beautiful and smells absolutely incredible. It's the perfect serving for two. It's budget-friendly. It comes together nice and quick. And if they can't love you for your garlic breath, then they don't deserve you. So with that all said and done, there's one thing left to do, and that is we can then dig in. The sauce is spot on. The garlic isn't over the top. It's not going to ruin your date or anything like that, so don't worry. The prawns are delicious. They've released a beautiful flavor into that sauce as well from that initial sear, and then we deglazed down and ripped all of that flavor off the bottom. An absolutely beautiful dish. Doesn't take long at all. It's cheap, and it's perfect for date night.