Mar 27 2008
Not so classy Italian
I realise it may sometimes seem like all I do here is rave about how good the food has been. Not always, I hope.
- Spaghettini with Prawns and Chilli
Don’t get me wrong, this dish wasn’t unpleasant or anything. I just didn’t feel like it was any greater than a sum of its parts. The blurb in the book had bigged it up to some degree and I’d been looking forward to the dish for a couple of days.
Perhaps the failure was in the substitutions. Don’t tell anyone, but we used spaghetti instead of spaghettini. Stone the crows! More significantly, I didn’t manage to get sun-blush tomatoes (I stayed at work tonight till after half six and then there was an offer of a lift home…too good to pass up just to go to Waitrose rather than Somerfield) and so I used sundried toms instead. Now my dad’s always complained that most sundried toms you can buy aren’t proper sundried toms, so I’d hoped it was an acceptable subsitution, but in reality they were probably a bit robust, both in texture and flavour, for the dish.
The chilli kick was noticeable but I didn’t feel it added much. The prawns were big and a bit chewy. Perhaps I should’ve used little prawns; these were king prawns and tiger prawns being ‘used-up’ from the freezer (in preparation for our hopefully impending house move). They didn’t seem to be a part of the sauce; needed a longer slow cook, perhaps.
What else can I say? The flavour of the rocket gets completely lost, in all the heat and chilli and prawn. The fresh parsley on top, on the other hand, was authentic and alive and definitely not to be forgone. All in all, however, a bit of a let down.
I’m glad there are some let downs to be honest; otherwise I feel I’d only ever be deciding to definitely cook things again. To be able to write certain recipes off gives me a bit of space and freedom for the future.
Post-match analysis:
I had the leftovers for lunch at work today, and I thought they were great. I don’t know whether this can be primarily attributed to the fact that I didn’t take many bits of tomato with me, or because the flavours had a chance to fuse overnight, or maybe just the fact that I was starving. But I agree that the tomato was on overload.