Garlic Prawns

February 10, 2008

There’s a temptation when cooking prawns to leave all the hard labour of beheading, peeling and deveining to the diner. However, as a diner, I like to have all that messy business already dealt with so I can concentrate on the eating.

There’s another more practical issue to consider – prawns that haven’t been deveined inevitably contain traces of gritty sand which detract from one’s eating pleasure. And you can’t really devein prawns without peeling them.

There’s nothing for it but to put on the stereo or the Food Channel and settle down with the bag of raw prawns, a sinkful of water and a container for the crustaceans’ armour.

It was well worth the effort for this dish of garlic prawns which I have adapted slightly from the one in Pete Evans delicious recent book, Fish.

My main departure from the recipe was omitting 4 tablespoons of chilli confit and substituting some sambal oelek. The confit is made by cooking 120g deseeded and chopped banana chillies in a cup of olive oil on a very very low heat for two hours until the chilli is soft. I didn’t have the banana chillies for making the confit, so I used my favourite sambal oelek which is pretty hot so I don’t throw in too much. Asbestos mouths might want to use more.

Pete also specified 16 king prawns to make four starters. I used raw black tiger prawns in a size that yields about 45 per kilo which served as a generous main for three.

Once the prawns are peeled, this is a quick dish to make. We had ours with a salad but it could serve several more if dished up over pasta.

Pete suggests it could also be made with scallops, bugs, scampi, sardines, crab, mussels, vongole or pipis.

Garlic Prawns

3 tablespoons olive oil
8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 anchovies
1 teaspoon sambal oelek
3 tablespoons chopped flatleaf (Italian) parsley
1kg raw prawns, peeled and deveined, leaving the tails intact
250g canned cherry tomatoes
2 thick slices ciabatta bread, toasted then torn into pieces

Put the oil, garlic and anchovies into a cold frying pan and cook until the garlic starts to turn golden. Add the sambal oelek, parsley and prawns and toss for 20 seconds. Add the tomato and season with sea salt and cracked black pepper then cook until the prawns are just cooked. Add the ciabatta toast and let it soak up the sauce a little before serving.

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