Whilst lying in bed unable to sleep at 4am today, I suddenly remembered that my mum had given me some frozen king prawns at about 5pm yesterday and that they were still in the boot of my car!  I pulled on a dressing gown and rushed out to get them, hoping they weren’t going to have leaked smelly prawn juice all over the place and was really relieved to find that I had plonked the carrier bag into a cool bag so whilst they weren’t quite frozen any more, they were only just defrosted and still quite cold.  It did though mean that they needed to be cooked today.  They were supposed to be for a fish pie I need to make in a couple of weeks time for my Dad’s birthday lunch (recipe for that later).

I had a butternut squash in the fridge that I keep forgetting to use and it was getting to the point where it was use or lose time.  I had been reading on a cooking forum I belong to about mandolins, which reminded me that I have one of those great, OXO good grips, julienne peelers so I decided to make squash noodles to go with it and lemony, spicy prawns were born.

It was absolutely delicious and the man of the house insisted I should share the recipe.  It is also super low carb!

Although you could use pre-cooked prawns in this, you would need to add them in after everything else and once it’s all bubbling away and almost cooked, so that you don’t over cook them and make them tough but you do need to make sure they are fully hot.  That’s not so easy to work out whereas with using uncooked prawns, it’s easy to tell they are cooked because they turn from grey to pink.

I would recommend making this in a wok like pan.

Ingredients

500g raw king prawns (defrosted)

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 fat cloves garlic, grated

1/2″ ginger root, grated

1 teaspoon lazy chilli

Juice of two lemons (remember to grate the zest off first and freeze)

50g butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 green pepper, finely diced

100g cherry tomatoes, chopped in half

300g julienned butternut squash (a couple of handfuls!)

Method

• In a large frying pan or wok, melt the butter in the oil over a medium heat and add the onion
• Fry for a few minutes until the onion starts to become translucent then add the garlic, ginger and chilli and continue to fry gently for a few minutes 
• Add the lemon juice to the pan and turn up the heat to high
• Toss in the prawns and stir fry for a few moments
• Add the remaining ingredients and continue to stir fry until all the prawns have turned pink
• Remove from the heat and drain the liquid in the pan into a small saucepan
• Put the saucepan over a high heat and boil vigorously until the liquid thickens and reduces by about half
• Pour the sauce back into the wok and stir through and serve