Our pals at Rio Vista Olives sent us the incredible oil that we cook with in this post. Like everything that we recommend on our blog, we use and love their products, and hope that you will too!
The Story
Sometimes we cook up the classics, other times we think: what would you get if you made sea anemones out of pasta, plated them into a rockpool, and made that rockpool out of margaritas? This week’s pasta is lime and tequila prawn sacchettoni, made with blue spirulina dough, and served in citrus salt enclosed pools of juniper-olive oil, dehydrated blood orange and lime, pippies, and fresh seaweed.
To be honest, this little dish actually began with the idea of blue spirulina pasta. We’d made dough with chlorella before, but wanted to try out the algae thing in blue. It seemed only natural to make it a seafood dish, and the thought of salt and citrus lead me to the margarita, which in turn lead me to tequila prawns. As an avid diver and underwater macrophotography enthusiast, I thought it was time to reimagine our sacchettoni (that you might remember from our previous charcoal recipe) as anemones, and so suddenly we were building a margarita rockpool.
There are a few bits and pieces to get together for this recipe, but like our smoky nettle cappellacci it’ll all be worth it when it comes time to construct your little pasta world!
The Pasta
A bit like our red dragonfruit tortelli, some of that incredible blue will be lost when the pasta’s cooked (interestingly I haven’t found this to happen with chlorella), but you’ll still be left with a gorgeous blue-slate colour that’s a little less incongruous in a rockpool anyway. We only ever use actual foods to give colour to our pasta, but of course if you’d like that bright blue colour to stay around after cooking, just add a little bottled colour into your dough hydration.
The dough itself is pretty straightforward, and you can whip it up in the usual well, kneading it as a ball for 10 minutes, before resting for 30.
The prawns are simple to prepare too – just let them sit in that marinade for a bit, before giving them a couple of minutes in a high heat pan. Then blitz to a paste and roll into large grape-sized balls.
Once your dough’s ready, roll it out to a medium-thin thickness and cut it into rough squares, dropping a ball of filling into the centre and bundling it up into sacchettoni.
You’ll need a little more time to make those citrus chips, so you might want to prepare them in advance (they last really well). Of course, if you have an actual dehydrator, just chuck them in there and let it do its thing. Otherwise stick your oven on low and give them a few hours, turning occasionally. Once they feel and look dry (eg. firm and no shiny bits left on the flesh), they’re probably ready. Note that they’ll become crisper as they cool.
Then just boil up those pippies, lifting them out with a slotted spoon when they’re done, and retaining that water to cook the pasta in. Remember to discard any pippies that don’t open. And you’re ready to plate up!
We grabbed a small bowl, dipped the rim in molasses, and then stamped circles to sprinkle with our citrus salt. Shake any excess off, and then start building your rockpools. Fill the margarita rims with olive oil right before serving to prevent the salt from dissolving.
It’s all a bit of delicious fun, so follow along closely, or take our ideas and do your own thing with them. Either way, buon appetito!
– Al & Al.
Ingredients
Pasta
- 150 g 00 flour
- 50 g semolina
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives' Nothin' But Mild)
- 1 tsp blue spirulina
Pasta Filling
- 200 g school prawns shelled and deveined
- 2 tbsp tequila
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 tbsp lime juice
- 1/2 tsp coriander finely chopped
- 1 small red chilli chopped
- Salt pepper, to taste
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Rio Vista Olives’ Nothin’ But Mild)
- 1 tbsp sour cream
- 1 egg white
Plating
- 1 blood orange
- 1 lime
- Zest of one lime finely chopped
- 1/2 tbsp regular salt flakes
- 1/2 tbsp black salt flakes
- 1 tsp molasses
- 2 tbsp + 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin (we used Awesome Food Co.’s EVOO+Juniper)
- 40 g fresh seaweed washed and drained
- 8-10 pippies cleaned
Instructions
Dried Citrus
- Preheat the oven to 65 degrees Celsius. Thinly slice the blood orange and lime, to a thickness of 3-4mm, and then lay out on a wire rack.
- Bake for 3-4 hours, turning every 1-2 hours, until the slices have shrunk and dried out. We found that the lime was ready after about 3 hours and the orange after 3.5. Remove and allow to cool.
Pasta Dough
- Combine all ingredients in a food processor, blending for 1 minute. Remove and knead for a further 10 minutes, before resting in an airtight container for half an hour, away from heat and direct sunlight.
Pasta Filling
- Marinate the prawns with all other filling ingredients except the olive oil for one hour, refrigerated.
- Drain the prawns, retaining the marinade, and fry in the olive oil on medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes. Once they begin to brown, add enough marinade to deglaze. Remove from the heat and allow to cool before blending to a paste with the sour cream and egg white.
Sacchettoni
- Chop the dough in half, and roll through a pasta machine at the widest setting a few times, folding over itself in between passes. Step through to a medium-thin setting of 6.
- Cut the dough into squares of approximately 10cm, curving the edges inwards slightly to give the finished sacchettoni a little more interest, and place a large grape-sized ball of filling into the centre of each.
- Gather the dough square together around the filling, ensuring that no air is trapped, and pinch together to seal. Rest the sacchettoni on lightly floured baking paper as you prepare the rest of the meal.
Plating
- To plate, coat the rim of a large glass with molasses, and use it to stamp circles onto the plate. Sprinkle circles with salt flakes and lime zest. Tip and gently shake the plate to remove any excess.
- Bring a large pot of water to a vigorous boil. Add the pippies and boil for 2-3 minutes until they’ve all opened up. Drain, retaining the water and discarding any that don’t open. Use the remaining water to cook the sacchettoni until al dente. Drain, and then gently toss both the sacchettoni and pippies in 1 tbsp of the oil to coat.
- Stand the sacchettoni upright, adding the pippies and small mounds of seaweed to the plate, and then arrange the dried blood orange and lime slices amongst them.
