My Friend Kae’s Tiger Prawns In Ginger

Whenever I sit down to write a blog post, what I (entirely too often) catch myself writing (and then replace with something else to avoid repetition) is something along the lines of “I have always adored {insert food item/type here}.“  It’s not my fault.  Really.  (And it’s true every single time, too.)

And as usual, today I could quite honestly start with  “I have always loved prawns…” and that, too, would be true.  On the other hand, there is more to say about today’s lunch, as it happens – and that is that it is possibly my favorite way of eating prawns, and also that the recipe was taught to me in early 2000s by my friend Kae, an American of Taiwanese extraction, and whose father is an amazing chef in his own right.

I remember whining to Kae about how whenever I tried to make prawns at home, they’d never taste as cleanly ‘prawn-ey’ as they did in a good restaurant – or at her place, and asked her what I was doing wrong or missing.  After which, she got some prawns out of the freezer, and made this, explaining every step as she went.  And yes, this really does taste like the prawns you’d get from a good restaurant, without a hint of fishy flavor, or being overpowered or overpowering by/with the seasonings.

So, what’s the magic secret?  There are a couple, actually, and while some are self-explanatory, one was actually a surprise to me at the time.  That one is the fact that, if you want your seafood to taste good, really good, you want alcohol.  I have mentioned this before (here), but it bears repeating – white wine, mirin or plain sake will remove any traces of fishy smell from fresh seafood.  So, there’s wine in this recipe, though not as a rinse but rather as a sauce ingredient.

The other part is that the prawns need to be cooked with their shell still on.  I am not so much of a purist as to insist on cooking them with their heads on as well (some argue that is the way to truly superior flavor), but I rather dislike the idea of buying peeled prawns for this.  Although, for reasons of niciety, and if you can be bothered, you can remove the legs.  Why shell on?  Very simply, because if the shell is off when the prawn is cooked in any way other than deep or shallow frying, it’ll become tough and lose all its juices, since it’s shell is actually it’s skin as well.  On the other hand, if you can’t find any but peeled prawns, this will still be heavenly with those – just make very, very sure that they are completely defrosted before cooking.  Cooking peeled prawns from frozen will not work very well (or, if I am to be honest, won’t work at all).

The third part is that while I am quite relaxed about cooking prawns from frozen if they are cooked in a soup, fish stew or curry, they must be defrosted and well-drained for this (or for any other dish where prawns are to be sauteed).  I don’t go so far as to dry them on paper towels, but a few minutes and a few shakes in a colander are the very minimum (and it’s not like it’s difficult to defrost and rinse the prawns and then stick the colander over a bowl or plate to drip while you prepare the remaining ingredients).

Once ready, these can be served on rice, on salad, or with a baguette to sop up the sauce, but as I have recently purchased a bag of fantastic quality round-grained (sushi-grade) Japanese rice from Hong Kong Trading here in Stockholm, for today’s lunch I simply steamed the rice, piled it into bowls and then put the prawns and sauce on top of its slightly-clinging sticky mounds.  Since rice cooking methods vary immensely based on what rice it is, my best advice here is to follow the cooking instructions on your bag of rice.  For sushi-grade rices, my usual method is to rinse the rice in cold water and then soak it in a sieve in cold water for 15 minutes, then drain and add 1.5 measures of boiling water for each measure of rice (as it was measured when dry before soaking) to the rice in a pot, bring to a high boil, stir and quickly reduce heat to low and cook covered for ~15 minutes.  Then, the lid can be lifted and wrapped in an absorbent kitchen towel and replaced, to collect condensation and avoid rice getting cold or wetter than it needs to be.

To prepare the prawns, here’s what you need:

• ~300g defrosted and drained prawns (shell-on) – serves 2 persons.  I use tiger prawns, but smaller species can also be used.
• 3-4 tablespoons canola or peanut cooking oil
• 1.5dl white wine, sake or mirin (if using mirin, omit the following 1tbsp of sugar)
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1-2 fingers of fresh, peeled ginger – sliced finely
• 3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced finely
• a pinch or more of chili flakes (to taste)

How-to:

• Heat oil in a large non-stick pan on medium-high heat.
• Add ginger slices and chili flakes and saute till ginger just looks cooked and edges start to barely color.
• Add garlic and fry several seconds unti fragrant and bright white in color.
• Move ginger-garlic mixture aside and turn heat a bit higher, then add prawns and spread them as much as possible into a single layer.
• Sprinkle sugar and then salt over the prawns, and once the down-side of those is turning red, pour in the wine.
• Mix the prawns, wine, ginger and garlic and turn heat to high.
• Saute the prawns while the wine reduces around them until they are bright red on both sides (flip those that have a darker side up) and flesh is white and opaque.
• Remove off heat and serve over rice.

Note:  Don’t forget a bowl or plate for prawn shells which are to be peeled off while eating.  No, this is not a dish to be eaten elegantly (like any other dish involving cleaning crustacean shells off while eating), but the sharp and sweet ginger-garlicky flavour and the juicy prawn flesh are really, really more than worth the mess.  Trust me!

Of Empty Wine Rack and Entertaining (and removed boxes, as an aside)

Yes, I know I’ve not written in a while, and for that I have only myself to blame. Well, that, and the invasion of boxes, necessity of doing official paperwork to do with moving between different countries, and the winter plague*cough*flu*cough, all of which I have wrestled with during the past weeks.  There is also an entry on social context of food which I have been writing for a while, but have not yet finished – though, as I am now resuming my social schedule and the apartment is beginning to look less like a cardboard jungle, and more like someplace I can invite people into, it is quite fitting to get it finished and posted.

With that in mind, my eyes fell on our wine rack, which in the past months has gotten emptied/sadly neglected, and now houses just a couple of random bottles, and my quince rum sitting rather lonely in its mostly-empty expanse.  The wine rack, therefore, is also in need of being populated, and the question I pose to myself is what should go into it, and in what combinations.  And so, the following list of things I would want was born.

Yarden Mount Hermon Red

Mind you, we are not big drinkers ourselves.  We aren’t even middling, to be honest – I think our average alcohol intake amounts to a couple of glasses of wine a week when we aren’t entertaining, and so there are considerations not only of what to stock the wine rack with, but how to balance the number of bottles of any given kind.  Now, unless my count is wrong, I have five or six spots in the refrigerator rack for white wines, and eight empty (twelve total, but the bottles there now can be moved) spots in the built-in wooden rack for red, rose and whatever else.

So, what would I want to have there (and can acquire with reasonable ease in Systembolaget state-monopoly shops in Sweden)?

In no particular order:

• A Chianti or other Sangiovese-based dry red wine.  I like Tenute Piccini Selezione Oro Chianti Riserva, but it’s not normally carried by Systembolaget, though their regular one is.  Perhaps try that one, or find another.
• A Pinot Grigio.  Preferably Italian, though I have heard that Romanian and Moldovan ones are very good as well, and Systembolaget carries a few.  Banrock Station is Australian, but is also worth noting.
• Yarden Mount Hermon Red by Golan Heights Winery.  One of the better commercially-available Israeli export wines.  And they do have it here!  Yay yay yay!
• A couple of bottles of Georgian wine (not US Georgia, but the original one).  Kindzmarauli or Akhasheni preferably, but Hvanchkara would not go amiss either.  Not the foggiest idea how to go about getting those in Sweden.
• A Beaujolais-Villages, as some of them can be very soft, without too much tannins.  Need to see what is locally available.
• A White Zinfandel (Cabernet Blanc).  Preferably American, and is likely easy to get hands on.  Yes, I like the fruit-punch wine too!
• A dessert wine, such as Beerenauslese.  Or a variety of Eiswein.  Or a Vin Santo, om nom nom!
• A bottle of Amontillado Sherry – more for cooking than drinking, though I never turn my nose up at drinking it on its very own!
• Some sparkling wine.  I am not an expert in that by a far stretch, but I dislike it chalky or too dry, which rules a lot of it out outright.

I am of the conviction that a good wine is good more than once, and thus the above wish list is probably more than enough to populate the racks with surplus (should I get my greedy paws on it all, which I hope I can, eventually).  As mentioned above, considering my incredible lack of prowess at selecting bubbly beyond sweet Italian Asti, I will leave the selection of actual Champagne (and Cognac and Whisky) to T, since he is far more of an expert in those than I.

The point of what to drink, of course, is still secondary to the question of who to drink it with.  Thankfully, now that I am back here, there isn’t a serious lack of people to [feed] socialize with!  In fact, with the boxes removed and most of the book piles brought at least to a semblance of order, T and I both declare this place officially no longer dangerous open to the public friends and relatives to visit!  Again.  Especially if they are prepared to be force-fed entertained!

It Doesn’t Have To Smell Fishy!

The thought to mention this has occurred to me last weekend, when two of my friends were visiting and I was preparing a king prawn fried rice for dinner.  Marty had offered to help while I ran madly back and forth along my workspace, and I offhandedly told him to take the bottle of mirin off the counter, and drench the prawns in their bowl with it while I finished the rest of the prep.

Not two minutes later, I told him to dump the prawns into a colander to drain the mirin off them, and he, curious about the short time those spent in the sake, wondered what had been the point of it (clearly not marinating).  And so it occurred to me, that despite having used the technique, I have never heard mention of it either in cooking shows, from people other than the one who taught it to me (thanks, Kae!), nor in any cookbooks I’ve read (or at least I have not noticed it in them if it was there).  That’s not to say it is totally unknown (apparently the wikipedia page I linked does mention it!), but it is not well enough known to the general public for my taste, so – here it is.

The reason, and subsequent piece of advice, is simple.  Seafood and fish can sometimes have a “fishy” smell, even if they are rather fresh (though less pronounced when the seafood is very fresh, the hint of odour can still be there).  A lot of people cannot stand this odour, and thus avoid seafood (which is not only good for you, but is also a fantastic thing to eat!), and they do not have to.  A simple, short rinse in mirin (or any similar type of alcohol), or dry white wine (if you do not like the flavour of mirin), completely neutralises and removes the unpleasant smell, without affecting the flavour of seafood significantly (and not at all in any negative way).  If none of the wine/mirin flavour is desired in the dish, the seafood can be subsequently lightly rinsed in cold water (something I never personally have done myself).  Similarly, if making a seafood soup or stew, addition of a small amount of white wine (half a cup or so) to the soup pot has the same effect.

So, if you like the idea of eating things which swim (or sit around underwater in their shells, or whatever) instead of walking the earth, but don’t like the “fishy” smell, give them a boozy bath before cooking.  The difference it makes is really amazing!

NOTE: about using mirin – it does have a lot of sugar in it, which makes me treat it very carefully (my opinions of sugar as food are less than flattering).  However, if you are concerned about sugar (and are sugar sensitive, diabetic or have a hypoglycemic tendency), white wine of most non-sweet varieties, or dry sake can substitute just as well if not better for this purpose.