Garlic Prawn and Broccolini Stir-fry

The mistake nearly everyone makes with a prawn stir-fry is leaving the prawns in the pan the whole time. They go from perfect to rubbery in about forty seconds, and once they're there you can't bring them back.

So we cook them twice: hard and fast to start, out of the pan while the vegetables go, then back in at the end for fifteen seconds to warm through. Same pan, one extra step, completely different dinner.

What you need

• 600 g raw prawn cutlets, peeled and deveined
• 400 g broccolini, cut into lengths
• 2 tbsp olive oil (or a neutral oil)
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 long red chilli, sliced — optional
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• Juice of half a lemon
• Cracked pepper

Cutlets are prawns already peeled, deveined and butterflied, tail on. It's the format that makes this a fifteen-minute dinner instead of a thirty-minute one — we do the peeling at the counter.

How to cook it

1. Dry the prawns. Wet prawns steam instead of searing. Paper towel, both sides, don't skip it.
2. Hot pan, half the oil, prawns in one layer. Ninety seconds. Turn. Another sixty seconds, until they've just turned opaque and curled into a loose C. Tip them into a bowl.
3. Vegetables next. Rest of the oil, then the broccolini. Two minutes without much stirring so it picks up colour, then a tablespoon of water and a lid for one minute.
4. Garlic and chilli. In now, not earlier — garlic burns in a hot wok in under a minute and burnt garlic is bitter. Thirty seconds.
5. Everything back together. Prawns in with whatever juice collected in the bowl, soy sauce, lemon. Fifteen seconds, tossing. Off the heat.

Making it work for you

Watching sodium: the soy sauce is nearly all of it. Half the soy and add the other half of the lemon — you lose very little and drop about 400 mg a serve.

Bulking: serve over rice or noodles. A cup of cooked rice is roughly 200 calories and 45 g of carbohydrate on top.

Cutting again: use one tablespoon of oil instead of two and this comes in around 180 calories a serve with the protein untouched.

Buying: large king prawns work just as well if you'd rather peel them yourself — you'll want about 1 kg in the shell to end up with 600 g of meat.