thursday night dinner

Before I begin, sorry for the post five days after the fact. The bank holiday weekend - and the sun - has kept me outside. But I will endeavour to catch up quickly.

Thursday night's dinner was a prawn, goats cheese and pea pasta. Now, I know it sounds a bit strange, so give it a chance. I had prawns in the refrigerator and a lovely lump of organic goats cheese beckoning from the top shelf. I used Cooking Light magazine's search engine, typing in shrimp and goats cheese and came up with what I thought was trumps:

Shrimp with Lemon, Mint and Goats Cheese
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=689943

After all, I had all the ingredients I needed - leftover mint in the fridge from tabbouleh earlier in the week, frozen peas in the freezer, and the ubiqitous tomatoes on the vine.

I didn't have any mirin, so just deleted it from the recipe, though perhaps a dry white wine would have worked. I served it with wholemeal spaghetti - 75 g for me, and 150 g for Pete. I don't think the pasta was necessary, but the meal needed to be bulked up a bit for Pete.

Looking back, I don't think the goats cheese was a good addition to this recipe. And that's hard for me to say, being a lover of goats cheese. But if I were in the same position again, I would serve pieces of a wholemeal baguette with a bit of a goats cheese shmear on top. I don't think putting the goats cheese in the wet situation with the prawns, tomatoes and lemon really complimented any of the flavours.

I wouldn't use mint again either. As much as I love the herb, the lemon, garlic, peas, spring onion (scallion) and tomatoes tasted great without the mint. I accept that the peas-lemon-mint combo is a good one (actually, the dish inspired me to make a pea soup the next night with those very ingredients) but it wasn't right for this dish. Definitely a 1-star dish in my mind.