Red man eats red fish for dinner, and goes even redder.
In my SPAIN excitement, I bought a kilo of smoked paprika and some jarred tomatoes. I was hoping that the last sunburnt inhabitant of our airbnb might've at least left some great British pepper. But these, the paprika and tomatoes, were the only flavours in the livelaughlove inspidity of our kitchen.
As a result, all our meals were red. Red sauce on the red beef, red rice, red pasta. At the fishmonger, naturally, I bought red fish. You understand, I think, that we eat red stuff with red stuff.
Being red myself, I felt a strange kinship with these meals. I wondered if I, like the crustacean-eating Red Mullet, might go redder still over the course of our paprika binge. I did indeed get redder, and redder still, until all you could see at dinner time was red shapes coalescing, somewhere between Rothko and candy crush saga.
Red mullet, dried for a couple days, grilled peppers and prawn sauce, which we made from yesterday’s grilled shells.
One red dinner begets the next.
Sweat some onions, garlic and a little chilli in olive oil.
When they’re tender, chuck in some thyme or bay if you’ve got it, a teaspoon of smoked paprika and your prawn refuse. Heads do more work than shells.
If you have a glug of white wine, add it now, then cover with water.
Simmer for half an hour, then IF AND ONLY IF YOU HAVE A FINE SIEVE, blend it and pass it. Or just pass it, and reduce it until it looks like a pool of blood.
This is your sauce. Put it on red fish if you believe yourself to be insufficiently red.