This recipe comes from Shannon Bennett, a famous chef in Australia and a frequent guest/judge on Master Chef Australia. I've done my usual modifications, of course, along with converting to US measurements and improving the directions.

This recipe has lots of notes at the bottom - READ THEM FIRST.

This dish is super good and now a staple at the Parks household.

Prep Time: ~30 min
Cook Time: ~15 min (max)
Serves: 6 easily, 8 probably

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, very finely chopped
1 leek, thinly sliced (rings or sticks)
2 garlic cloves, sliced or diced fine
1 cup white wine
1 cup fish stock
20 (about 2#) tiger prawns / shrimp, raw, peeled, deveined
1 # pot-ready clams (optional)
1-1/4 cups coarse chopped shitake mushrooms
Juice of 1 lemon
7 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup basil leaves, thinly sliced, plus extra whole leaves to serve
1/2 cup tarragon leaves, plus extra to serve
14 oz. Orecchiette pasta, cooked BARELY to al-dente
Creme fraiche, to serve (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
pinch of saffron

METHOD

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.

Add onion, leek and garlic, and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until softened and becoming translucent.

Add wine and stock, increase heat to high and bring to a boil.

Add the seafood, then cover and cook for 3 minutes or until almost cooked.

Add mushrooms and stir to coat.

Add lemon juice, butter, saffron, and herbs, and cook, stirring until butter has melted.

Season and taste. Add pasta and cook for a further 1 minute to warm through.

Divide among serving dishes, top with extra herbs and serve with creme fraiche on the side.

NOTES

Wine?

By far my favorite wine to cook with is Sauvignon Blanc. You can find it anywhere, for a very reasonable price (mid-shelf is like $10-$12 and is perfectly fine). It would be perfect for this dish.

However, I didn't have any SB the day I made this so I grabbed an old but still serviceable bottle of Pinot Grigio I had laying around. Surprise, it worked fine. Chardonnay, also fine.

I would avoid overly sweet wines like some Riesling's and anything approaching dessert wine.

About Fish Stock

So I haven't done a lot of cooking with fish stock. I did some reading about it first to see what was recommended, how to make it myself, and what to look out for.

Overwhelmingly, everyone seemed to say "make it yourself". Furthermore, everyone seemed to say "make it yourself and use it immediately". Hank Shaw actually said "Once you take it off the stove it will NEVER be as good as it is RIGHT NOW, but if you must (I envisioned a sneer) you can keep in the fridge for a week, or freeze for a month or two.

Sigh .. I didn't / don't / probably never will have 5-6 pounds of appropriate fish carcass laying around.

So I went to the store. No fish stock of ANY sort at my preferred market. My backup market did have one though, a quart sized dusty cardboard container in the non-refrigerated section that had an expiration date more than 2 years from now.

I was convinced this was going to ruin my dish and contemplated boiling some shrimp shells or something equally redneck-y instead. But, as I really didn't have any basis of comparison, I decided to go for it.

It came out looking like dirty water. More or less clear with a brownish-reddish tint. Not a strong smell, but if you tried hard you could get a vague whiff of some sort of seafood.

Cutting the story short, it seemed to do its job and did not ruin the dish. Before I make again though, I am going to order some other options, to see if I can improve it on this point alone. My first attempt will be Better Than Buillon, which Amazon sells.

Clams?

The original recipe called for clams, and to be fair the picture was gorgeous. My store didn't have clams that day that I liked, so I skipped them, and no one in the family was the wiser. Since it made the "daddy keep this on the list" list, I put them as optional.

Prawns or Shrimp?

Ok, so if I was cooking this for holiday dinner, I'd probably run down to Whole Foods or a specialty seafood shop and get some bad-ass tiger prawns, langoustine, or other such tasty morsels. As it is though, I try and modify these recipes so that anyone can get nearly everything from a mass supermarket.

To be clear, regular shrimp work fine. Above and beyond, knock yourself out.

Mushrooms

I added these on a whim. They seemed to do perfectly fine. Skip if you want to. I used Shitake, but would imagine a good old white would be sufficient, or some oysters, or other "woodsy" type.

Pasta

This dish calls for Orecchiette pasta, which are the little round ones with an indentation.

Normally I would say use whatever you want (elbows, bow ties, shells), but in this dish you should relly try and find some Orecchiette. It's one of my favorite shapes, and is perfect for this dish. It's slighly less common, but both of my local markets have at least one brand available in this shape.

If I absolutely couldn't find it, or was too lazy to run it down, I would substitue medium SHELLS instead.

What is a nage?

Essentially it is a french term the describes a cooking method that is somewhat between poaching and steaming. It is generally used for seafood.

In a nage, you will usually saute some vegetables until translucent, add a cooking liquid, then partially submerge the seafood, then thicken the broth/sauce with butter and/or cream.

You can read more about nage here:

https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/washington/washington-dc/article/dining-in/nage-definition-cooking-seafood