This is one of my favourite mid-week dinners as it is so easy and quick to make yet so tasty! In fact I am pretty confident in saying it is probably the pasta dish I have made most frequently ever!

As with many pasta dishes, there is a lot of scope to play around with this recipe and over the years I have tried many many iterations, mainly down to the varying ingredients I tend to have lurking in the fridge.

I have tried slicing up bell peppers which is nice, but I prefer the overall texture in this dish to be quite soft, hence I prefer the mix of spinach which wilts nicely, and cherry tomatoes that soften and also give a lovely pop of juicy acidity. They also amp up the tomato flavour which you get from the tomato puree.

Sometimes I throw in some peas, though again, spinach and tomatoes just can’t be beat, they’re much easier to twist up on a fork with linguine.

Speaking of the pasta, I have made this with tagliatelle, linguine, spaghetti, fusilli, penne. Basically all my usual pastas, I like linguine best. I find the pasta satisfyingly wide (spaghetti is a little thin for me, tagliatelle a little too wide).

Finally I have used mascarpone in this recipe but I often substitute in other things for creaminess e.g. cream (double, single or sour), or crème fraiche.

Basically this is a crazily versatile dish, again going to my theory that it is hard to mess up pasta.

Yet with all these endless variations I have written my favourite version here. Even here, I would say feel free to play around with the quantities to your taste though e.g. extra or less veggies or prawns as you like.

This dish first started out as Nigella’s prawn pasta rosa from her book Nigellissima, that is a very simple recipe, basically just small prawns in a simple sauce. Whilst I do love that recipe, I am one of those people that really needs vegetables for a meal to feel complete, I also love big king prawns and so whilst the base sauce is very much inspired by Nigella’s original recipe, I have basically adapted everything else and I hope you like it this way too!

Time: 20 minutes

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 3 cloves garlic, crushed

• ½ tsp crushed chilli flakes

• 200g king prawns

• About 18 cherry tomatoes

• Approx 350g linguine

• Approx 200g baby spinach

• A glug (about 2 tbsp) marsala wine or white wine

• 1 ½ tbsp tomato puree

• 4 tbsp milk

• 4 tbsp mascarpone

• Juice of ½ a lemon

• Handful of parsley, chopped

• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Boil the pasta in a pot of salted water. I am assuming you have pasta that takes about 10 minutes to cook. By the time the pasta is done, the rest of the ingredients will be ready.If you have fresh pasta, then leave the cooking till a little bit later.

2. Heat the olive oil on medium heat in pan and then fry the garlic and chilli flakes for a minute or so.

3. Add in the prawns if frozen, when starting to defrost, add in the cherry tomatoes, I like to leave them whole but you could halve them if they are really big. If you are using fresh prawns then add in the cherry tomatoes first for a few minutes then the prawns.

4. Whilst those are cooking, in a bowl mix the tomato puree, milk and mascarpone together and set aside.  

5. Once the prawns are almost cooked and the cherry tomatoes are soften and the skins starting to split, add in the marsala wine or white wine and let bubble for a minute then add in the spinach and allow to wilt.

6. Add in the sauce ingredients and give everything a nice mix.

7. By now the pasta should be done, drain and then add to the rest of the ingredients.

8. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add in the chopped parsley and toss.

9. Season with salt and pepper to taste then serve immediately.