Seafood Laksa With Wild Limes and Lemon Myrtle Linguini

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic, peeled

50 grams minced ginger

4 shallots

4 small red chillies (or as hot as you choose)

1 teaspoon peanut oil for frying

1 teaspoon of shrimp paste

500 milliliters ml coconut milk or 300 coconut cream

300 milliliters chicken stock

400 grams snapper fillets cut into 8 pieces

12 scallops in the half shell

8 king prawns

2 squid tubes

1/2 teaspoon Lemon Myrtle*

10 grams Wild Lime Confit*

60 milliliters Lemon Aspen Syrup*

300 grams lemon myrtle linguini

1 tablespoon a generous of salt

a dash of sesame seed oil

(* Can be found at: www.dining-downunder.com/shop/)

Preparation

Mince the garlic, ginger, shallots and chilli together using a sharp knife and a levered chopping action; then, in a hot pot with a little oil, quickly fry the minced ingredients allowing the aromatics to be released; add in the shrimp paste and continue frying for half a minute longer.

Add the chicken stock, boil and begin reducing, after a few minutes add the coconut milk, lower the heat a little (keeping at a simmer) and continue reducing, the aim is to reduce the volume to a thick soupy consistency – if you are in a hurry, use coconut cream and you won’t have to reduce it so much.

In another pot, boil some salted water for the lemon myrtle linguini, put in the pasta and make sure it doesn’t stick together by gently stirring once the pasta has softened (about 2 minutes) – stirring before this time tends to break the pasta up as it can still be hard and brittle on the inside.

While the flavour base in the pot is reducing down to around ¼ of its original volume, begin to prepare the seafood; peel and de-vein the de-headed prawns (I keep prawn heads and freeze them until I have the time to roast them and then cook them down in seasoned water to make a rich shell-fish stock which I also freeze in ice cube trays for later use), cut the squid tubes into bite sized pieces and score these with diagonal, parallel cross cuts; finally, remove any bones from the snapper fillets.

When the lemon myrtle linguini is cooked, drain it, add a dash of sesame seed oil to stop it sticking (and for flavour, of course) and set aside.

Add the squid, snapper, prawns and finally the scallops, wild limes and lemon aspen syrup to the coconut stock reduction and keep the laksa at a gentle boil until the seafood is cooked.