Spaghetti with bacon and prawns

It was a very good weekend (apart from Real Madrid making fools of themselves)! If the coming week turns out just as well (and the little birds seem to think it might)… but I won’t jinx it 😉

A good weekend deserved a good ending. Though when I got up this, let’s call it morning, the plan was not to eat anything today. Unfortunately breakfast put paid to that idea (a mate made it, and it would have been rude to refuse). So much for the plan.

But here’s what I meant to tell you. Last night at midnight (yes, midnight!) we started a tournament that didn’t finish until well after three. So I slept away from home. The telly was on at breakfast and for the first time in my life I saw the English version of the show we call “Ugotowani” in Poland: “Come Dine with Me”.

I’ve got about 150 channels on my telly, but I only pay for them so I can have every flavour of Canal Plus (for the football). This was on BBC Something-or-other.

Do you know how it works? In the Polish version (much, much worse, though I haven’t watched it in ages), 4 complete strangers take turns over 4 consecutive days inviting the others home for dinner. A proper dinner, mind, not just one dish like at my place. There has to be a starter, a main and a dessert. In the original there are five of them.

Brilliant stuff. Maybe it’s because the Brits are a bit more open, more at ease. Maybe they don’t get quite as uptight as people back home. Naturally they pick contestants who are poles apart. Today’s star pairing was a gay chap versus an ex-soldier (who won, by the way). I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account. You have to see it for yourselves.

I’m writing about this because that show inspired the spaghetti I made today. More precisely it was Adam, the gay guy on the English “Ugotowani”, making lasagne. His motto:

“Why make something yourself when you can save time by buying it at the shop and know for sure the Italians made it?”

Good one, isn’t it? But what inspired me was what he did with the lasagne. It was Italian-Chinese lasagne. He threw in every spice he had to hand. A lot of Chinese ones. I was crying with laughter.

I didn’t throw in everything I had to hand, but I did decide to see what would happen with the mix below. As it turns out, I really liked it and unfortunately ate both portions 🙁 Give it a go.

At a glance: 

Prep time: 20 minutes

Serves: 2 portions

Calories: well, how many calories does it have? You don’t know? Then how on earth should I know? 😉

Ingredients for spaghetti in coconut milk sauce:

• 250 grams of smoked bacon
• 8 large tiger prawns, peeled and cooked (black tiger)
•  3 large shallots
• 4 cloves of garlic
• half a hot red chilli (fresh)
• 1 hen’s egg
• 200 ml coconut milk
• ground black pepper
• salt
• olive oil
• dried herbes de Provence
• spaghetti (enough for two portions, not too much. The photos below give you a rough idea of how much)
• rocket

Method (the strangest pasta I’ve ever made):

I cooked the pasta al dente (in lightly salted water, of course. The pasta goes in when the water is boiling, not before, for exactly 9 minutes). Then I drained it. I peeled the prawns, cooked them and dried them thoroughly.

I heated some olive oil in a frying pan (literally just a few drops, since the bacon we’re frying is quite fatty) and fried the finely diced bacon (actually, I’d bought it ready-diced in a packet). Once the bacon had fried a little, I added the roughly diced shallots and garlic. In went the finely chopped chilli last, along with the prawns, each cut into three pieces.

I seasoned it with ground black pepper and gave it all a good stir.

I turned down the “heat” (from 5 to 3 on my hob, on a scale of 1–10) and added the pasta to the pan.

I poured the coconut milk into a bowl, cracked in one hen’s egg and mixed it very thoroughly. I poured the sauce into the pan and turned the “heat” up from 3 to 5. I seasoned it with a little herbes de Provence.

I kept stirring until the sauce thickened. I served it in a deep plate lined with fresh rocket. All done. Enjoy!