Garlic Butter Prawns with Crusty Bread

The smell hits you before anything else. Butter and garlic in a hot pan, that particular warmth that fills the kitchen in about thirty seconds and makes whoever's in the next room wander through to ask what you're making. This is a ten-minute supper that punches well above its weight.

I first ate something like this in a pub on the Suffolk coast, years ago. A small iron dish of prawns swimming in garlic butter, a basket of bread, a glass of cold white wine, and the sound of the sea through an open window. I wrote it down in the notebook that evening: prawns, butter, garlic, bread, the sea. It didn't need more than that. It still doesn't.

The whole thing comes together in the time it takes someone to set the table. Hot pan, good butter, garlic sliced thin, prawns that sizzle and curl. A splash of wine, a squeeze of lemon, and a handful of parsley thrown in at the end. You bring the pan to the table and tear the bread and nobody speaks for a few minutes because they're too busy mopping. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone. This is that feeling, only faster.

We're only making dinner. But some dinners remember themselves.