I didn’t want to open up my new bag of risotto rice so I went with a short grain rice to cook this dish although I reckon you could do this with Thai rice as well. This dish is gluten free and low in fat – perfect for us single ladies. The cooking time is relatively long mainly because of the rice. If you want a speedy meal, I suggest cooking the rice first but then it wouldn’t be as flavourful as it would be if you follow the recipe. So, the ingredients are:
- 5-6 prawns per person (my dog ate 1 prawn…it dropped onto the floor during the shelling)
- 100g of spinach leaves or asparagus
- 1/4 cup of Japanese rice (or any type of rice)
- 100g river clams
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 2 dessert spoons of Parmesan cheese (optional)
- 2-3 cups of water
- 2 tbsp white wine or vodka
- salt and pepper to taste
Please shell the prawns and then boil them in the water with the river clams. Reduce until it is about 2 cups of liquids. Set this aside and it will be used later. Alternatively, just use any type of stock that you prefer.
Method:
- In a heated saucepan, put some olive oil and fry the minced garlic.
- Once the garlic is golden brown, fry the prawns until half cooked.
- Add in the washed rice and stir
- Add in the stock that was prepared earlier
- Add in the white wine
- Stir in the spinach
- Stir continuously until rice is cooked (you may need to add in a bit of stock and stirring is very important because it will stick to the sides)
- There should be some liquids left at the point in time. To thicken the rice, add in 1 dessertspoon of the cheese
- Stir until the cheese is melted and fully incorporated into the rice
- Serve and garnish with the remaining amount of cheese
For an extra oomph, drizzle a little bit of truffle oil. There are tons of variations that you can do to this recipe. You can swap the prawns with fish/mussel/chicken/bacon. If you want to do a vegetarian version, use only mushrooms and I suggest mushrooms such as button or portabello.
As mentioned earlier, this is not a quick dish so be prepared to stand in your kitchen for about 20 minutes at the stove. You could dump everything into a rice cooker after the frying of the garlic and prawns but you’ll run the problem of the bottom bits sticking together.
I think that this fusion dish brings the best of Italy and Asia together…no? Haha…have fun and eat well!
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