Category: Prawns

Risi e Bisi e Gamberi #rice #peas #prawns

This recipe is a Venetian classic, based on an Elizabeth David classic recipe with some delicious twists contributed by word of mouth by some very well known Sydney chefs who my husband Adrian hangs out with.

Here’s the Elizabeth David recipe:

The big difference of course is using frozen peas which don’t take as long to cook, so to recreate a bit more pea flavour, I added some of the frozen peas to the onion mixture and cook along with the rice, in addition to adding peas towards the end as well.

Adding seafood to this dish is optional but makes for a lovely meal in itself. The sweetness of the peas and the creamy texture along with prawns and calamari flavours is delish!

For 2 people as a main course:

Ingredients:

1/2 onion finely diced

50-60g fatty pancetta diced

50g butter

1 cup Arborio or carnali rice (round rice)

500ml chicken stock

250ml water

3 cloves of garlic

1.5 cup frozen peas

6-8 raw peeled and deveined prawns

150g thinly sliced calamari rings

Grated Parmesan

Method:

1. Melt 40g butter along with pancetta and cook gently in flat bottomed pot until pancetta fat starts to melt.

2. Add onion, garlic and cook until starting to soften, add half a cup of frozen peas and cook until peas and 1/2 cup stock and cook until pea “start to absorb the stock, fat and butter”. Smash peas with the back of a wooden spoon or fork to release pea flavour into the cooking liquid, simmer until liquid evaporates and butter/fat is “evident” again.

3. Add 1 cup rice and mix gently to cover grains of rice in butter fat mixture, then add 1.5 cups stock and simmer without stirring much until liquid just starts to disappear, stir and add then add 1 cup of water and simmer again.

4. Check rice to see if just cooked, add more water if necessary, then add rest of the peas, prawns and calamari and simmer for 5-6 minutes until peas and prawns just cooked through.

5. stir through the rest of the butter and half a cup of grated parmesan cheese, and serve either wedge of lemon, and extra parmesan, pepper on the side.

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Prawn and Coconut Rice Biryani #keralaflavours

Inspired by the mint, curry leaves and green chillies growing in our little courtyard garden, the flavours of Kerala recipes came to mind.

This light, bright biryani is quick to make and is delicious with a zesty salad and Spicy mint and coriander pesto

It has flavours of Prawn Caldine imbued into a delicious coconut rice topping finished off cooked “dum” style in the oven.

Recipe to come….but here are some photos to whet your appetite!

Prawn and Coconut Rice Briyani
Fresh curry leaves
Fresh mint
Green chillies

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Garlic Prawns with crispy flatbread

This combination of Garlic, Chilli and Dill Prawns with wholemeal flatbread crisped up in a dry frying pan was a delicious.

Quick and tasty starter or add a green salad and make it a meal!

Garlic, chilli and dill prawns

Shanthini2 Comments

Dill, Garlic & Chilli Prawns

Delicious start to Christmas here with this simple but super delicious dish, and a great side salad.

Fresh sweet green prawns sautéed in a garlic, chilli, olive oil, lemon concoction and then tossed with finely cut dill.

We stopped off at Peninsula Seafoods in Dromana on our way to Sorrento in the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria where wet are spending Christmas again with our family.

With beautiful ingredients such as stunning olive oil, best balsamic and beautiful fresh green prawns… it was never going to go wrong!

.

Dill, Garlic and Chilli Prawns

Swerved with sourdough toasts drizzled with olive oil and a fresh green salad!

Shanthini3 Comments

Hokkien Har Mee Laksa Bowls #harmee #laksa

This version of the famous Hokkien Har Mee, spicy Malaysian prawn and pork soup, was inspired by our daughter’s recent visit to have Laksa at Abel’s Komi Tiam in Canberra.

Stuck here in Sydney, with a couple of pork short ribs in the freezer, I googled around for a recipe to use the ribs and come close to an almost irreplaceable Abel’s Mum’s Laksa experience.

I read with interest about all the different versions of street hawker soups …which brought back great memories of our trip to Malaysia many moons ago.

Night market at Langkawi Island in Malaysia

The solution came forward in the form of a combination of recipes and my decision to just buy a good ready-made curry paste to start off the process. I bought this and other ingredients at a new Asian supermarket Summit at Bondi Junction

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s easy to make and you can pre-prepare most of it and just repeat and assemble at the end.

Ingredients for Hokkien Har Mee

The other inspiration was this article in The Guardian Use your Noodle By Yottam Ottolenghi

The end result, somewhere between a laksa and a har Mee was just the soupy Asian fix we were looking for, and I got to use up the pork short ribs!

This recipe will serve 3-4 people.

Ingredients:

  • 500-750g pork Asian style short cut ribs (ask your butcher)
  • 8-10 green prawns with heads and shells intact
  • 180g curry laksa paste (or closest you can get)
  • 50g of rock sugar chunks
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 4 litres of water
  • 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
  • 500g yellow Hokkien noodles
  • 350g or thereabouts of rice vermicelli noodles
  • 1 bunch water spinach or Asian greens of your choice eg bok choy
  • 2-4 hard boiled eggs
  • 3-6 tofu puffs
  • Bean sprouts
  • Asian crispy fried shallots
  • Leaves of half a bunch of Vietnamese mint (totally optional but great if you can get it. It’s not called Laksa leaf for nothing)
  • Finely chopped coriander, mint or vietnamese mint for garnish.

Method:

1. Cut pork ribs into single pieces in between the ribs, set aside

Cut pork into single ribs

2. Peel and remove veins from prawns, reserving heads and shells.

Don’t forget to keep prawn heads and shells

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large stock pot or casserole, add half the curry paste (reserve the rest for later). Stir fry curry paste until dark and fragrant, add prawn heads and shells (not the prawns!). Stir fry until prawn heads turn pink.

Add in prawns after frying half the curry paste

4. Add pork ribs, rock sugar and salt and cook turning until ribs are covered in curry paste and meat is sealed.

Add pork ribs to prawn and curry paste mixture.

5. Pour in all the water if you can and bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 1.5 hours, checking from time to time to skim off impurities and oil from pork ribs. Check to see park is fall of the bone tender, add more water along the way to ensure you have enough soup for all your diners. (End result should be about 2 litres of delicious soup stock.)

Skim stock to remove impurities along the way

6. After about an hour, hard boil your eggs, blanch your green vegees and set aside, blanch Hokkien noodles and vermicelli noodles, chop herbs, wash bean sprouts …so you have all your ingredients ready to go.

Blanch greens until just tender

7. After an hour and a half of simmering…..Strain soup stock into a large bowl through a fine sieve or strainer. Remove pork ribs from sieve and set aside to cool in a bowl.

8. I then strained the stock one more time through a fine sieve, but that’s not totally necessary.

9. Clean stockpot or casserole dish. Pour stock back into the pot and place on stove ready to heat up and pour into your bowls.

10. In a small non-stick pan, add the other 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, heat, then add all the rest of the curry paste. Once the curry paste is dark and fragrant and the oil is separating from it, place half of it into a small sambal dish. Add the prawns to the remaining paste and oil in the pan and fry until prawns turn pink and paste is nicely coating the prawns.

11. Heat the soup stock until simmering and add vietnamese mint leaves, tofu puffs to warm up….Quickly reheat ingredients in microwave if needed, an assemble bowls.

Reheating stock with laksa leaf and tofu puffs

12. In large soup serving bowls, arrange your ingredients starting with equal amounts of Hokkien and vermicelli noodles sitting side by side, top with warmed pork, green, prawns, bean sprouts, heated up tofu puffs and halved boiled eggs.

Place ingredients on bed of noodles

13. Remove vietnamese leaves from stock if using, then ladle soup over bowls until just under the brim of ingredients.

Soup poured over ingredients and garnished before serving

13. Sprinkle with herbs and crispy shallots and serve piping hot with the sambal on the side for those who want an extra chilli kick.

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Coconut Chilli Prawn Rolls

These coconut chilli prawn rolls are so quick and easy to make…but are delicious and impressive as a starter or canapé. Beats making normal spring rolls.

Paired with a citrus lime Mayo dipping sauce, they bring together the best of coconut coated prawns and garlic chilli prawns all in one neat wrapping.

You could easily change the flavours and textures by using other spices to the prawns.

Ingredients:

  • 12 green prawns, shelled amd deveined with tail left on
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 red chilli
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • Toasted coconut flakes or toasted desiccated coconut
  • Oil for deep frying
  • 6 square sheets spring roll pastry
  • 1 tablespoon flour or cornflour
  • 2-3 teaspoons water
  • 3 tablespoons whole egg mayonaise
  • Juice of half a lime

Method:

1, Peel and devein green prawns, keeping tails intact

2. Smash up garlic, chilli with salt in a mortar and pestle to form a paste

3. Marinate prawns with paste, can put into fridge for an hour or two if you have time

4. Defrost spring roll pastry according to packet instructions. Make flour glue by mixing flour with water in a small bowl.

5. Take one sheet of spring roll pastry, slice in half, corner to corner, diagonally, to make 2 even triangles.

6. Turn one half of pastry so long edge perpendicular to board, then place prawn with just the tail hanging out on sheet as close to you as possible that it will fit.

7. Sprinkle prawn with toasted coconut flakes or desiccated coconut. (If using desiccated coconut, toast in pan first and cool before adding.)

8. Fold over triangular end of pastry, roll up prawn in rest of pastry, and secure with flour glue.

9. Keep rolls in fridge until you are ready to deep fry and serve.

10. Deep fry until pastry is golden brown for 2-3 minutes. Drain on paper towel.

11. For citrus mayonaise mix 3 tablespoons of mayonaise with the juice of half a lime and mix well until lime juice is integrated with mayonaise to make a silky dipping sauce.

Coconut Chilli Prawn Rolls

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