Green Queen Recipes: Gluten Free Tagliatelle With Wild Prawns & Chunky Baby Tomato Sauces

We love pasta, you love pasta, they love pasta- everybody loves pasta…That’s how excited we get when we have pasta here at Green Queen. We don’t have it often but when we do, we like to keep the recipe simple a la Italiano and the flavours intense and packed with punch. Although pasta comes in various shapes and sizes, the pasta that gets our vote today is tagliatelle. It’s similar to fettuccine but wider and flatter and has the ability to absorb more of our delicious sauce, giving it that much-loved slurp factor. We just brought some back from our travels in the US. For gluten free pasta options, choose a brown rice, potato starch or corn pasta base- Little Giant has a good selection of spaghettis and penne. You can make this totally grain free by choosing a quinoa, lentil, black bean, buckwheat or chickpea variety. Try the Tolerant Foods pastas (they don’t have tagliatelle either but they have fusilli, which would work well).

We’ve chosen to make a spicy tomato based sauce with sustainably sourced prawns. Make sure to use organic tomatoes and off the vine if you can- give them a good smell. The ripest tomatoes smell incredibly sweet where the stem meets the fruit. On the prawn side, try to find ecologically farmed organic prawns or a wild variety. Non eco prawns have a dirty back story (both morally and hygienically) and are best avoided at all costs.

This dish is simple, filling, nourishing and will take you just minutes to whip up. It’s an ideal dinner recipe for families, students or the time-poor individuals, a seemingly ubiquitous number in our overly busy lifestyles. This sauce is particularly moreish so we sometimes plate more sauce than pasta! Feel free to serve the dish with your own proportion preference though. Enjoy!

Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook Time: 10 mins | Serves 4

Ingredients

• 250g dried or fresh gluten-free tagliatelle (or pasta of your choice)
• a good pinch of sea salt or any other high mineral salt
• 1 tbs extra virgin cold pressed olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 Thai/bird’s eye chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
• 750g peeled raw sustainably sourced or wild prawns, tail intact
• 3 cups chopped cherry or grape tomatoes (ideally organic)
• juice of half a lemon
• 3 dill sprigs, leaves only, roughly torn or chopped
• grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (optional)

Directions

1. Boil salted filtered water in a large pot.
2. Add pasta and cook to packet instructions (usually 8 to 10 minutes for dry or 3 to 4 minutes for fresh pasta) or cook until al dente.
3. Meanwhile, warm a large frying pan on medium-high heat with the olive oil.
4. When the oil is hot, add the chopped garlic and chilli, and fry until garlic is lightly browned.
5. Toss in the chopped tomatoes and prawns, stir well and simmer for around 4 minutes- the prawns should be fully pink.
6. Add the drained pasta with a small amount of cooking water, dill leaves and a good squeeze of lemon juice to the frying pan and toss to combine.
7. Serve immediately- add the grated Parmigiano to taste if using.