Simple food...

The other day, on Facebook, I saw a photo of someone queuing up for a bowl of the prawn noodles soup in one of the hawker centres in Singapore. It was obviously very famous and very good, hence the queue.

In the comments, someone said that the dried version is even better, which reminded me of how good they were when I used to eat them not far from my house back in Singapore.

This is where I got the idea - why not make an Italian pasta version?

Then I remembered that some years ago, I had a “red prawn linguine” dash in an Italian restaurant in Hong Kong and it was very good (and expensive, being their signature dish)!

This is MY tiger prawns pasta cooked to the taste I like (with 4 tiger prawns per person instead of 1 red prawn)!

I added crispy bacon bits because 1) to give it a bit of crunchy bite, 2) Singapore’s prawn noodle soup usually has deep fried pork lard, so this is symbolises that.

Makes 4

Ingredients:

• 125g middle bacon to make crispy bacon bits
• 1 × 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 1 x 400m passata
• 50g fresh nduja
• 8 pieces of anchovies
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 320g spaghetti grossi
• 16 tiger prawns, shelled and deveined. Keep the heads.
• 4 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive oil
• 4 tablespoons of finely chopped flat leaf parsley

Instructions:

1. Prepare a pot with boiling, salted, hot water.
2. Put the prawn heads in the pan to fry in medium heat (with a tiny bit of oil) until they start to turn pink.
3. Add the oil and continue to fry the heads. Use tongs to squeeze the heads for the juices to come out.
4. Fry for 2-3 minutes, until the heads turn red. Remove the heads.
5. Add the garlic, anchovies and fry for 1 minute. Break up the anchovies with wooden spoon.
6. Add the nduja, tomatoes and passata. When the sauce starts to bubble, add the prawns.
7. When the sauce starts to bubble again, turn heat down to low and let simmer, stirring occasionally.
8. Start cooking pasta. Cook the pasta to 2 minutes before the recommended time on the package.
9. Remove the prawns and set aside after about 5 minutes. This prevents the prawns from overcooking.
10. When pasta is ready, transfer straight to the pan, mix and cook for a further 30 seconds.
11. Mix in the parsley and the prawns to cook for another 30 seconds.
12. Turn off the heat. The sauce should now be quite “thick” and paste-like.
13. Plate the pasta, sprinkle some of the bacon bits on top and top it with 4 prawns per plate.

To make the crispy bacon bits:

1. Pre-heat oven to 220ºC. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Cut the wider part of the bacon in half. Cut bacon into small pieces, about 1 cm wide.
3. Put a little oil into a pan. Fry the bacon on medium heat first and switch to low heat once the bacon starts browning.
4. When all the bacon pieces are browned through, remove the heat.
5. Transfer the bacon to the baking tray. Put in oven and bake for 20-30 minutes or until desired crispiness, checking every 5 minutes or so.
6. Transfer to a paper towel to soak up the oil and leave to cool.