prawns

I had this, well the half pint version, in a lovely little seafood restaurant in Hythe a couple of weeks back. It’s super simple to assemble and makes quite an entrance with the pinky, orange prawns piled up high in their shells. You can buy these prawns, frozen, cooked, shell on, sometimes from the supermarket, almost always from Wing Yips and from your local fishmongers. They’re much more reasonable than the peeled frozen ones you get and make for a fantastic deconstructed prawn cocktail where you have to get all involved, ripping the heads off and peeling the shell away. Despite this possible palava, I quite like it, the prawns are sweeter and juicier that way and it makes a lovely starter or light lunch. I had my ‘pint’ for lunch on Saturday served with some seriously old ‘skool’ Marie Rose sauce, a wedge of lemon and a slice of buttered brown bread (gf).

Ingredients:

Shell on, cooked, frozen prawns

Lemon

Bread to serve

For the Marie-Rose Sauce:

Mayo

Ketchup

Creme fraiche

Worcester sauce

Method:

Defrost your prawns in cold water. Shovel the prawns into a pint glass, I chose a rather pretty Stella glass. Mix up the Marie-Rose sauce, a couple of teaspoonfuls of mayo and creme fraiche, a squirt of tommy k and a splash of Worcester. Set up your sauce in a little dish or a ramekin and serve alongside. To be really kitsch, like me, add a round slice of lemon to the glass and a nice slice of buttered brown bread cut into triangles (don’t you know?!). Make sure you provide an empty vessel for the heads and shells and eat with someone who loves you or someone you hate and spray them with prawn juice as you get stuck in! Yum, yum!