Gambas al ajillo: A Recipe

Gambas al ajillo (garlic prawns) is among my favourite of the classic tapas recipes. It has a classic simplicity: a few ingredients, perfectly combined. It has indulgence and excess, while not being the worst thing for you, either. Bold and comforting at once.

Like some other simple tapas recipes, on paper it might be simple, but the devil is in the details. You need to put on your culinary artist hat (the Spanish are all crazy artists at heart) and obsess slightly about the little things.

That's how you get excellent gambas al ajillo. Made excellent once, you'll have it in your catalogue always, and will always look forward to the next time.

Ingredients

Prawns
As many as you would like to serve, basically. The limit is how many can lie flat in your terracota. They can be shelled or unshelled. They can be fresh or frozen. Try to get them uncooked. Obviously, the better the quality, the better the dish. Eight large prawns make for a generous portion for one person, as a rough guide. Smaller prawns? Use more. Keep in mind frozen prawns shrink during thawing and cooking.
Garlic cloves
Compared to almost any other recipe using garlic, be excessive. If you don't like garlic, this isn't the recipe for you.
Dried chillies
The small ones that come in a jar of spices will do (guindillas). Fresh chillies will certainly work, but the classic Spanish version almost always uses dried ones.
Extra virgin olive oil
As good as possible — you want it to be hard not to soak up in the bread, leaving none. Use the good stuff for this dish, it is essential.
Fresh parsley
Bread
This is an "eat some bread with something delicious to soak up into it” dish, so bread is crucial. I suggest half a full baguette per person, at least — more may be desirable. Whatever bread you enjoy most for dipping. I favour a simple fresh white baguette.
White wine
Cooking wine is fine, and this ingredient is optional. A splash adjusts the balance of the flavours in the oil well, but the dish is perfectly intact and authentic without it.
A little salt

Equipment: a small terracota dish (the little round clay ones). You want to lay all the prawns flat and have it crowded. I doubt this dish would work in large terracotas, and I've never seen that done; best to make multiple small dishes to serve larger numbers.

Quantities of ingredients will be mentioned further as part of the method. I encourage you to adjust things to your preference. You should have enough of every ingredient, as long as you have them.

Method

Grab a handful of parsley, and chop. It doesn't need to be finely chopped, and it could be teared instead of chopped. A rustic, coarse chop works well.
Garlic cloves. You want to use what feels like an excessive amount of garlic, compared to other dishes. I tend to use around 5 cloves (a mix of sizes, maybe a couple large cloves and three small-to-medium ones). Chop them coarsely, which protects them from burning (it's easy to burn the garlic in this dish, which leads to disaster). You also want to remove any greenish stem in the middle, by slicing each in half first to allow removing. You could also just give them a quick crush and add the cloves whole, and let the oil take their flavour rather than actually eating them — that works perfectly well, and when left whole it's easy to avoid eating them. I crush, peel, cut the very ends off, slice in half, remove the inner greenish part, then cut diagonal slices as thickly as I would like to eat them.
Chillies. Don't chop them — add them whole, or maybe twist them in half so the seeds fall out into the oil to infuse more heat into it, but don't finely chop (they would burn). Make a little pile next to your garlic and parsley. I love heat, and I might add five, but don't actually eat them (intentionally). Know the heat of your chillies, and the heat you want to use — it varies tremendously, so there's no universal guidance. They should add some fire and pepper everything up to make the dish bold, but not overpower the garlic, oil, and prawns (which are the stars of this show).
Prawns. If you're cooking them fresh with shells on, no preparation is needed. It makes the dish more messy to eat, but the best gambas al ajillo I ever experienced did use unshelled prawns. If you're using frozen prawns, which I tend to do at home, you can quickly defrost them by putting them in a bowl of very hot water for 3-5 minutes (the hottest temperature tap water goes to, where you can't leave your finger in, but it's not near-boiling where the prawns will cooking in the water). Once defrosted, dry on kitchen paper to minimise the water content transferred into the dish.
Add olive oil to a terracotta, and heat to low. You want a generous amount of olive oil, but assume you'll soak it all up with the bread, and add as much as you would actually want to consume. Don't skimp, either, this should be a generous amount of oil compared to most recipes that use olive oil in moderation, as a subtle medium and flavour base. Extra virgin olive oil is quite healthy to consume in amounts that would be excessive for any other oil. The Spanish know this (you wouldn't believe how much olive oil goes into a tortilla de patatas, or Spanish omelette).
Terracottas transfer heat very quickly compared to steel frying pans. Be careful it's not too hot (if in doubt, add a single piece of garlic and check the sizzle), but then add all the garlic. You'll sense the heat is right from a very slight immediate sizzle, but nothing dramatic. It is easy to burn the garlic, and that's one of the potential disasters of this recipe. Don't do that. After maybe 30 seconds, when the garlic has clearly started to soften but is still early in its cooking stage, add the chillies. Twist them in halfs to spill the seeds into the oil, if you like more heat infusion.
You can use a small wooden spoon to arrange things a bit and check nothing is burning. Once it's clear the garlic and chillies are cooking, and the oil will have been infused with some of their flavour, this stage is complete. It should take about 3 minutes from the time of first adding the garlic, tops. If you go longer, things will burn. If you are able to get a very low heat into the terracota, you might be able to infuse the oil for longer. For gas stoves, the lowest flame will likely ensure this stage must be brief.
Season with salt at this stage. You can either season the prawns before adding, or season into the oil directly and give it a stir (my preferred method). Salt enhances all the flavours well, but it doesn't need to be much. The sweetness of the prawns, the spice of the chillies, and the garlic create a naturally vibrant combination. One healthy pinch is sufficient, two pinches is fine, more starts to push the dish towards over-salted in a small terracota.
Add a splash of white wine, if you choose. It has a good effect, but this is an optional ingredient. Sometimes I prefer the more minimalist approach of omitting it entirely and letting the primary flavours work alone. A small splash — just enough to nudge the oil towards a more complex, saucy flavour, and not more than that. Think in drops, as in at most five drops. Allow 10 seconds or so to allow the alcohol to evaporate a bit. The more important thing is to avoid overcooking anything before the prawns are in.
Add each prawn flat into the terracota. Burning the garlic or chillies will now be less of a problem, due to the heat distribution and added water content from the prawns. Pump the heat up if needed to more of a medium, rather than low, heat. Cooking the prawns is also a brief stage, 2-3 minutes for this step, before flipping — they cook quickly. Once you see some of the tops of prawns are turning from grey to pink and cooking, it's time to turn every prawn over to complete their cooking. Do keep an eye on your garlic while the prawns cook and re-arrange things as needed, if the garlic veers towards burning.
Once the prawns are flipped, give them another 30 seconds. They will be quick to finish, quicker than you might think possible, because they are already half-cooked before you turned them over. Chances are you'll overcook the prawns a bit first time. It's not the end of the world, as long as the garlic isn't burnt. If the garlic is burnt, I really don't know what to say. My condolences. I tried to warn you, don't burn the garlic, I said. I really can't see any way to recover this dish, I'm so sorry for what has happened to your gambas al ajillo. It's ¡horible!, ¡horible!, this thing that has happened to your dish.
Wait… you didn't burn the garlic? Great! Onwards, pronto! The garlic may still burn…
Drop a dollop of chopped parsley on top. You can be quite generous with the amount of parsley, it's a fantastic compliment that becomes part of the sauce, wilted and lightly fried. Again, vary as per your preference — I enjoy a generous amount.
Run to the table with the prawns still sizzling in the terracota. Wait! Don't pick up the terracota with your bare hands; it's hot. Transfer it to some kind of heat-resistant platform, then run, sprint, to the table! The final seconds of the cooking of the prawns should happen at the table. This is a dish to be delivered with a bit of a sizzle. The masters of gambas al ajillo, found in select tapas restaurants across Spanish territories, manage to deliver it with quite a dramatic sizzle and everything is perfectly cooked. I don't know how they do it. To this date, I can only manage an audible sizzle for at most five seconds. If you manage more than that without burning the garlic, I salute you.
¡Que aproveche!
Break your bread into dipping-sized pieces, soak up some of that delicious oil, and place prawns on top to your heart's desire. Repeat. Enjoy.
If you're not careful to avoid the chillies, you might suddenly think “now there's been an eruption!” and secretly enjoy this unexpectedly dramatic part of your tapas experience. Tears streaming down your cheeks.
Am I meant to continue recipe instructions into the eating portion of the meal? Probably not.
There is an art to measuring the bread remaining against the prawns and oil remaining in your terracota. All part of the fun.
This dish goes well with beer, cider, or white wine. Chances are you'll soak up every last bit of the oil with the bread, with nothing other than a few chillies left in the bowl and barely time for a sip or two. In any case, it is wise to have a beverage at hand in case you do consume a pepper whole during the dipping and munching process. You maniac.