Dish of the Week
Dad’s Prawn Linguini

The Community Potluck on October 7th, 2023

... was an event at Common Ground, next to CCA. It served as an open invitation for anyone in and/or of the community to come together and share food and recipes. It was also a celebration and a thank you to the people and place that has provided me with so much throughout the course of this project. Everyone was encouraged to not only bring a dish of their own but to also respond to one (or more) of the recipe-writing prompts, written directly on the tablecloth. In exchange, the event was catered with food from Soul Food Sisters, with everyone encouraged to take leftovers away with them. These prompts were inspired by the conversations I’ve had with people in Garnethill over the last few months, Including the comfort of home-cooked and home-shared food as well as the things we cook to celebrate, commiserate and more.

The event coincided with the Food Art Film Festival at CCA, and meant that food artists and foodies sprinkled delights alongside dishes made by home chefs and amateurs, with everyone sitting around a connected series of tables talking to each other. Different cooking techniques were discussed as well as where to buy or forage ingredients and what to do with them. The food served as a starting point for recipe sharing, which then became community sharing, as contact details were exchanged between strangers.

A potluck is a traditional practice wherein leftovers from meals at taverns and inns would be thrown into a pot and kept warm, specifically to serve people on short notice, or those who were unable to access a fully curated meal. This process of taking from the pot and seeing what food your ‘luck’ gave you eventually evolved into a meal where everyone would bring an individual dish and then the whole spread would be shared between everyone. Not only would this encourage conversation and community but also it meant that those who had access to more could share with those who had access to less in a more anonymised way.

For this potluck I brought dishes from this project, including woodear and okra salad and a halal chicken version of 叉燒. In order to guarantee openness and freedom from judgement recipes were encouraged to be given to me anonymously, with the promise that I would select one at random to make as part of this recipe series. I therefore shuffled all the sticky note recipes up in an envelope and swore to cook the first recipe I removed from it, which just so happened to be...

Dad’s Prawn Linguini

... was a joy to make, even though there was some guess work as well as some points I ended up going off-recipe. Part of the reason I wanted to encourage people to write recipes on sticky notes was to give a limited amount of space so that people had to think beyond the traditional methods of recipe-writing. Instead of including every bit of information they could, instead they only had space to write the most important things. Therefore I had no idea how many tomatoes to use, for instance, or what the ideal prawn-to-sauce ratio should be. I also had no idea about the history of the recipe, whose Dad the title referred to for instance, or what its significance would be for the author. All I can speak to was that I made it how I made it, and it was delicious, even if I did forget the lemon.

Recipe

Dad’s Prawn Linguini

1. A good glug of olive oil in a frying pan.
2. Fry some anchovies until they melt and add fresh chilli.
3. Add lots of finely chopped garlic and gently soften.
4. Meanwhile blanche fresh tomatoes in hot water until skin splits – remove skin and roughly chop.
5. Add tomatoes to pan and let simmer for a good while.
6. Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze of fresh lemon.
7. Boil linguini in salted water.
8. Add fresh king prawns for a minute or so to pan with tomatoes.
9. After 10 minutes stir the linguini into sauce.
10. Glug more fersh olive oil.
11. Top with lemon zest and rocket and a squeeze of lemon.