Garlic Prawn Recipe

Miriam González Durántez gave us her Garlic Prawn Recipe (or gambas al ajillo recipe) from Made In Spain! It’s perfect for sharing at parties.

You can find gambas al ajillo in most tapas bars, either as a ración (a larger dish than a tapa, with bread on the side), or on top of toasted baguette slices with a tiny bit of mayonnaise. The best prawns in Spain come from Huelva, where Columbus’s ships started their expedition to discover America.

Calling a Spanish person a ‘prawn’ is a derogatory term (the saying goes something like: ‘you are like a prawn, all of you can be put to good use, except for the head’). Using the language of food to refer to people, especially beautiful people, is common in Spain: a good-looking man is a ‘cheese’ (está como un queso), while a pretty girl is a ‘bon-bon’ or a ‘little sweet’ (un bonbón or un caramelito).

Most of this is part of the art of the piropo. Piropos are compliments that are given to you in the street (normally from men to women, though I am told it now often happens the other way around). The weirdest one I have heard is, ‘I would like to be a pneumonia to live in your chest’. Feminists have complained about piropos for years, as objectively speaking they are a bit demeaning for women. But wait to be a 48-year-old feminist as I am, and you’ll appreciate the value of being shouted a compliment from a stranger in the street!

The best prawns for this are unpeeled, as unpeeled prawns always have more flavour. Even frozen unpeeled prawns work, provided you defrost them first and increase their time in the pan to three minutes.

Serves 4 as part of a spread

Ingredients
2 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
1½ tbsp olive oil
250g raw prawns, ideally in their shells
sea
salt
1 tsp lemon juice (optional)

Method
Just fry the garlic in the oil and, when it starts getting a little colour, add the prawns and the salt. It should take just seconds (and a maximum of one minute) for them to turn from grey to coral pink. As soon as they are pink, sprinkle with the lemon juice and serve. Do not add herbs and be careful not to overcook the prawns.

Recipe extracted from Made In Spain by Miriam González Durántez, published by Hodder & Stoughton, £25