simple food - harissa prawn recipe

No need for a DNA test, I am definitely my father’s daughter. Bob is often heard to lament, “You can’t get decent prawns in New Zealand”. So, as the daughter in exile here in the land of “throw another shrimp on the barbie”, I do my best to eat his quota of our favourite crustacean.

While it’s easy to gorge on prawns, a mere half dozen per person is easy on the budget to add a little bit of special-ness to a meal. Though with medium-sized prawns being sold locally for a mere 40-50 cents a pop, a larger serve can still be much cheaper than a fillet of fish or a steak. Or even a block of organic tofu, come to think of it.

With an abundance of hot red chillies growing in the garden (do you want some?), every few weeks I’m making a batch of harissa paste to throw into a tagine or just spice up some vegetables. I have always been a sucker for sizzling plates of old-fashioned garlic and chilli prawns served in Spanish restaurants, so going the whole spice route hog and rubbing them with harissa made total sense to me.

Harissa prawns

1 tsp of stripped back harissa paste for every 6-8 prawns*

Rub paste on the prawns and refrigerate for about an hour.

Heat vegetable oil (olive, raw sesame etc) in a heavy based fry pan and cook prawns a couple of minutes. Drain on a paper towel. As this doesn’t take long, cook in batches so not to overcrowd the pan.

The prawns are simple and stunning. The cumin in my latest batch of harissa is quite coarsely ground, imparting a tantalizingly nutty flavour. They can be served hot or cold, though it is very difficult to not scoff the lot en route from pan to plate.

Serving suggestions

A platter of harissa prawns goes well with a selection of salads. The nuttiness compliments brown rice, toasted almonds, green beans and white bean salads in particular. Or try a simple potato and green salad combination .

Substitute harissa prawns for tempeh in a cross-cultural version of my meat-free nasi lemak.

As canapés, for finger food with a kick.





* Here’s my version of harissa again
6 medium hot red chilies
6 plump cloves of garlic
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
Salt
Oil

Toast the seeds in a pan, swirling all the time so they don’t burn. After a couple of minutes the aroma will tell you they are cooking nicely. Keep swirling until the coriander seeds begin to brown. Remove immediately from the pan (residual heat = burnt seeds) and grind with a mortar and pestle.

Chop the chilies into quarters (if you really don’t like the heat, deseed or use less chilies) and process with the garlic, a touch of salt and a drizzle of oil. Throw in the pounded roasted seeds and whiz until you have a nice paste. The consistency I aimed for was runny enough to process easily but a paste rather than a slurry. I used raw sesame oil not necessarily out of authenticity, just because we’ve got a surplus of it at the moment.

The raw paste had a kick but a nice rounded flavour from the other herbs as well. Given that I have a heavy hand when it comes to heat, this quantity of paste would be enough for a meal of about 6 people with good tolerance, or two meals of 4 for those who like things a little milder.

coming soon...

Loving all your thoughts in relation to talking at the conference tomorrow about how and why we blog.

If you've got more to say on the subject, this is your last chance to add to the discussion. Go for it!





PS: made the most fantastically easy dish this week - green prawns rubbed with homemade harissa, left to marinate an hour and then pan fried. Simple and absolutely stunning.

prawn cocktails

Finally got the time and energy to catch up on a bit of blogging housework!

In November when I mused about making prawn cocktails I got an enthusiastic response. Zoe it turns out is an old hand at the PC, knocking them out en masse at family Christmases for as long as she can remember. Considering her experience I took on her words of advice, “iceberg should be shredded superfine”.

I kept it simple; this was partially because the perfectly selected avocado purchased a couple of days before Xmas went off in the hot weather preceding the day. The other reason to keep it on the easy side was the nasty virus that laid me low for the good part of 10 days.

I must have unintentionally tuned into the zeitgeist with the PC being cover girl for January’s Gourmet Traveller though I reckon my cocktail sauce would taste even better!

So to the recipe, if you can call it that. This is so basic that quantities are not included so you can adapt it to the number you need to produce.

New old-fashioned prawn cocktails

Iceberg lettuce, 2 leaves per person, finely sliced
Cooked prawns, shelled with tail on, 3-6 per person
Lemon wedges
Avocado, cut into a fan, 1/4 of a large avocado per person (optional and not for the traditionalists)
Parsley

Cocktail sauce
Good quality mayonnaise (best if you make your own but Thomy was fine for the job and a lot easier)
Tomato ketchup
Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco sauce
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper if desired

To make the sauce use about 3 parts of the best mayonnaise you can lay your hands on, to other ingredients. The next ingredient is ketchup, for a cup of mayo I used about 2 tablespoons. Stir well. Add a generous shake of Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce and squeeze in some lemon. Taste it. Does it need more spice (I was surprised at how much Tabasco it took til I got the right balance)? I know this is a very imprecise ‘recipe’ but it’s all about flavour and the variety of your base mayo is going to affect the over all taste. The resulting sauce should be a browny-pink colour, have a discernable hint of tomato sauce without it dominating and a decent tang. Add salt and pepper if needed.

Assemble your cocktail. In a bowl or wide mouthed glass per person, start with a decent layer of shredded lettuce, then top with prawns and avocado fanned on the side (optional). Place some sauce on the cocktail or serve on the side in a jug. Sprinkle with finely chopped parsley, in our house it had to be good old-fashioned curly parsley, not the modern flat leaf variety. Add a wedge of lemon affixed to the side of the serving glass or if you want to be ultra-fancy a whole prawn with its head still on.




Leftovers

On boxing day there was some cocktail sauce and leftover barbecued prawns in the fridge, begging out to be eaten. It became a great sandwich with the prawns sliced and tossed with the sauce, some finely sliced spring onions and parsley. Fantastic!