Lemon chili prawn pasta

You know those dishes that can transport you to a completely different place, a completely different time, a completely different feeling? This simple pasta dish is one of them. It tastes of summer in an intense way that very few other dishes do. It's reminiscent of warm summer nights in Italian cities, of lunch at beach restaurants with your skin and your hair still salty and sticky from the sea, of azure skies, rocky beaches, and weeks of walking barefoot. Of wine drunk from water glasses, of hot, dry air heavy with the smells of rosemary, thyme, and oregano, of glowing sunsets, sandy flipflops, and loud and colourful saturday markets. Sunny, summery freedom in a nutshell pasta bowl.

It's one of my favourite and certainly one of my most-cooked recipes from Sophie Dahl's first cookbook, and it is absolutely made for those times when you think that you can't possibly walk around another day wrapped in jumpers, scarves, hats, coats, and warm boots. With a dish like that, summer can't possibly be that far away.

Make yourself a bowl of this stuff and enjoy your 4-months-early trip to warmer, sunnier places. And it will cost you much less than a round-trip ticket to Rome. Nice for impressing guests, too.

Lemon chili prawn pasta
(Recipe by Sophie Dahl)
Feeds 1

As much wholewheat pasta as you want
100 g/0.3 cup prawns, cooked
6 cherry tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
1 chili
Juice from half a lemon
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the box.

Halve the cherry tomatoes and sprinkle the with salt. Put aside.

Deseed and chop the chili and mince the garlic. Crush both into a red pulp, using a pestle and mortar. Add the olive oil and the lemon juice, and mix thoroughly. Wash the prawns, then add them to the lemon chili mixture and stir until they're completely coated.

When the pasta is done, put it into a bowl and add the cherry tomatoes and the prawn mixture. Season with pepper before serving.