Speedy Prawns with Ginger and Spring Onion

 This is something of a crossover with #JacobinDay, as when I fished the water chestnuts out of the cupboard for the photo it occurred to me that I'd not made this dish in a while. It's nice and speedy, but tastes as good as the version you'd get from the takeaway. Perfect after a day of doom-scrolling. Honestly, when will I learn that this is not helpful? I get distracted and sad/grumpy about the world, then I don't focus properly on other things and feel the need to put wine in the fridge even though I've been trying not to drink during the week. There is enough to be sad about given looming lockdown, ongoing family concerns, politics generally, without making it worse for myself. 

Anyway, speedy prawns. This recipe is from the now defunct and much-missed by me Domestic Sluttery newsletter (re-launching under a different name imminently), serves two but could be scaled up/down reasonably easily.

Chop a bunch of spring onions into inch long strips, and peel and chop a decent chunk of ginger into matchsticks. Start your rice cooking. Gently cook the ginger and spring onion in about a tbsp of sesame oil while you make the sauce, at this stage I also added baby sweetcorn in an effort to healthily feed us more veg.

Sauce: 3 tsp oyster sauce, 2 tsp light soy sauce, 1 tsp white sugar. Mix 1 tsp cornflour (mine is somewhat #ArchivedIngredients bbe date in 2019 but still good) with 30 ml of warm water and combine it all to make a thick sauce. 

Add the sauce, a pack of prawns (about 300g) and a drained tin of water chestnuts, stir thoroughly and leave to cook for a few minutes. It should then be ready about the same time as your rice. I chucked in some mange tout as well.

It doesn't look thrilling, but it does taste good and the cooking is process-y enough to distract from the news without being lengthy or complex.

Not looking thrilling