food hits and misses

After a run in with the flu, I've been  bit slack on the cooking front lately. We've been pretty much existing on fish and salad, pasta, and salt and pepper squid. Certainly nothing worth writing up a recipe about. Over the past two days, however, I've gotten back into things, and finally managed to get back to the cookbook challenge.

The theme for the week was apple. Rather than making an apple pie or revisiting apple sorbet, I decided to do something completely different. I found this recipe on a trip to the Fashion Capital, so I'm not even sure that it's in a cookbook. But if it isn't, it should be. It's Frank Camorra's Gambas a la Sidra.



The recipe calls for a casuelita to cook in, but since a trip to Simon Johnson failed to produce one, and I didn't have time to try Essential Ingredient, I decided to use the base of my tagine instead. Since I was making enough to feed four as a main course, I would have loved to have the Le Creuset risotto dish as an option. Not needing to cook the prawns in batches would certainly have sped up the cooking time, that's for sure.

Gambas a la sidra

Olive oil
1/2 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbspn parsley, chopped
4 large prawns
300ml cider

Method

Soak the casuelita overnight. Drain and dry. Slowly heat the casuelita over a low flame. Add the olive oil, parsley and garlic. When the garlic starts to sizzle, add the prawns. Cook each side for around two minutes until just pink. Deglaze with cider, then add enough cider to come just below the top of the prawns. Cook until the cider has reduced by around a third.