Pasta with vegetables and curried prawns

How to make pasta with vegetables and prawns .

This is the week of citrus, whether for dessert, like the previous lemon tart or in salty, as in these spirals with tangerine and prawn sauce .

I decided to prepare a recipe that fuses Italian pasta with the Asian style of northern Thailand, where it is common to mix curries with sweet flavors and a tangy touch of citrus, especially lime.

As I did not know if I was going to like the result, I decided to include only the aroma of citrus, with some tangerines, and thus have a softer recipe, the result is fantastic, well, some friends gave for dinner a few weeks ago.

As I wanted a showy recipe I used a pasta called Fusilli Bucati Corti of Pasta Garofalo, which combines the Fusilli which are the classic spirals and the term Bucati that defines the thickness of the pasta.

The result is a rounded pasta spiral, as if a spaghetti had been turned into a cord of a winding telephone.

The curves totally tight to each other make the sauce adhere perfectly to the structure, and in addition to all this, they are beautiful shapes, which as you can see on the plate enter through the eyes.

I leave you with a fusion of flavors that will not leave you indifferent, try them and you will tell me.

Preparing the vegetables for the sauce

1. Peel the onion, carrots, garlic cloves and wash the mandarin, tomatoes and pepper.
2. We cut the onion into thin julienne (that is to say in very thin strips), the peppers, the half zucchini and the carrots should go in sheets of half a centimeter thick and then we will cut everything into diamonds or similar squares, very Asian-style.
3. The garlic clove must be very chopped, if you have a garlic crusher it would be the right one.
4. Once we have the prepared vegetables we add a good jet of extra virgin olive oil to the casserole.
5. We introduce the garlic with a crushed cayenne with the fingers and we fry them a few seconds until they are golden brown.
6. This way we will be able to give the olive oil a touch of garlic, and we will prevent it from repeating after the meal.
7. First add the onion to the oil pan and season with salt and pepper.
8. We increase the temperature and stir everything gently, after a minute we add the rest of the vegetables (carrot, peppers and zucchini) and cook for just five minutes.
9. After these 5 minutes we add the diced tomato and mix the flavors of these ingredients for another 2 minutes.
10. We grate the skin of the tangerine, without reaching the white part because it is bitter. We reserve for last.

Preparation of prawns in curry and tangerine

1. Thaw the prawns in the fridge the night before. We peel them, remove the head and the shell that protects them.
2. We put a wide saucepan to cook pasta with very hot water and two bay leaves and add heads and shell of the prawns to cook over medium heat for ten minutes.
3. We strain this seafood water that we have improvised and return it to the saucepan where we will cook the pasta. We reserve.
4. Once we have the peeled prawns we remove the intestine (the black thread in the center).
5. We add them to the casserole with the vegetables that are still half done.
6. We spend the prawns only about 2 minutes without sautéing excessively. Just enough for them to turn pink and add the tablespoon of yellow curry, the zest of the tangerine that we have reserved and about 50 ml of hot water. We remove everything, no more than 1 minute.
7. We taste of salt and if necessary season with salt and pepper.
8. We remove everything with a wooden spoon, mix all the flavors well and remove from the heat. Once we have the sauce we start with the pasta.

Preparation of the Fusilli Bucati

1. The first step is to have the sauce ready before the pasta touches the water. The sauce should always wait for the spirals of pasta and not the other way around.
2. We heat a liter of water in a saucepan (in this case with the shrimp broth that we have reserved) for every 100 g of pasta, it is the recommended measure per person.
3. These proportions, which are normally indicated on the packaging, help the paste not stick together.
4. And always try to use a large casserole, the largest in your kitchen. If you cook pasta many times it will be very useful to buy a casserole for those occasions, a good investment.
5. When it begins to boil in spurts we add 1 generous handful of salt, about 2 level tablespoons for every 500 grams of pasta. Then we add the pasta, always all together.
6. We remove with a wooden spoon so that the spirals do not stick and are loose.
7. Cooking time is on the back of the package. We must be guided by these instructions because for each type it is different. In this case it is 11 minutes.
8. In this way we will achieve what is called pasta “al dente” or at the right point. In other words, do not overdo it, although a great tip is to try it almost at the end just in case the package misleads us.
9. Once the time has elapsed we drain it immediately and combine it with the sauce.

Presentation of the dish

1. We add the freshly made fusilli bucati corti to the tangerine and curry sauce. Mix everything with a spoon so that the flavors come together.
2. Optionally we decorate each dish with more ground black pepper. Always to taste or with a little chopped coriander, which is a luxury for this dish.
3. It is certainly a simple and quick dish to make, but delicious. Do not stop trying it and you will tell me …

Be sure to enjoy all the recipes for fish and seafood that we have on the blog.