When we were in Portugal this summer, we spent most of our days lolling by the pool, punctuated by the occasional cooling dip, and our nights sampling the local wine and barbecuing copious amounts of meat (and the odd cheeky aubergine that I managed to sneak on when nobody was looking). As you may have guessed from my recipes, I’m not ordinarily a red-meat-every-day kinda gal so one night I decided to marinate some prawns in a quick and dirty sauce thrown together with what we had in the villa. And they turned out amazingly! They were charred on the outside and succulent on the inside – and I reduced the leftover marinade into a sticky, lip-smacking, tongue-tingling sauce.

Proof that sometimes being forced to use just a few ingredients really does create the tastiest results!

So here is my accidental recipe converted into a light and invigorating mid-week supper. It takes minutes to prepare and even less time to eat!

A word of warning for the spice aficionado: I use averagely hot chillis for this and the result is nonetheless pretty fiery – the chillis are only cooked briefly and there is no creaminess in the sauce to mellow the kick. So…if you want to go for a super spicy chilli variety, you’re going to end up with a seriously sinus-clearing sauce. You’ve been warned!

Sweet & spicy prawn tacos

Serves 2 as a light lunch or supper

Ingredients:

– 3 red chillis, deseeded
– 4 cloves garlic
– juice 1 lemon
– small knob ginger
– 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
– seasoning
– about 400g raw prawns, peeled and deveined (cooked prawns will also work if preferred)
– 2 tablespoons runny honey
– corn wraps (or wheat tortillas if you prefer), to serve
– lettuce, shredded, to serve

Method:

Put the chillis, garlic, lemon juice, ginger, oil, a pinch of salt and a good few grinds of black pepper into a food mixer and pulse until everything is finely chopped. Add a tablespoon of water and pulse again. Tip: You can also just finely dice the chillis, grate the ginger and crush the garlic for a more textured marinade if you prefer.

In a bowl, cover the prawns in the marinade and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes. Tip: The flavour kick is better if you marinade but if you don’t have time, don’t worry – it will still be tasty!

In a frying pan on a high heat, pour in the prawns and marinade and cook until the prawns are pink (about 2-4 minutes, depending on size). Scoop the prawns out, set them aside, and return the sauce to the heat.

Stir in the honey, add another tablespoon of water, and simmer down for about 5 minutes until the sauce starts getting thick and sticky.

Mix the prawns back into the sauce and serve in warmed corn wraps, with the salad leaves and remaining sauce drizzled on top.

Source: Recipe and photos by pip & little blue.