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COLUMN: Ilse Cooks the Books (Prawns in Beer)

───   15:29 Thu, 12 Oct 2017

COLUMN: Ilse Cooks the Books (Prawns in Beer) | News Article
Ilse Smalberger

Welcome to my blog! The first of hopefully many delicious recipes I get to share with you - recipes from cookbooks that I love and like to make for myself and those I love.


First a little bit about myself and what this blog is all about.  I have always loved cooking and obviously love food!  I have always aspired to be one of those people who casually look into the pantry at dinnertime and conjure up a feast with a couple of potatoes, a few rashers of bacon, a tin of tomato paste and a few extra bits and bobs. 

I am, unfortunately, not one of those people.  I cook from recipes.  Over the years, I have assembled a number of recipe books - 66 at last count - and I have no intention of ever stopping.  I just love that feeling when you open a recipe book and there is page after page with gorgeous recipes begging to be tried.  I also buy one or two foodie magazines every month and have a couple of files full of recipes that I tore out over the years. 

But here's the kicker - even though I almost always cook from a recipe, I hardly ever follow it to a tee.  You see, sometimes I just don't have something to hand, or I like my dish to have a little more kick (or less!), or be less sweet.  If you ever try one of these recipes, I want to encourage you to do the same.  Even though it was developed by someone else, it has to become YOURS and the only way to do it, is to adjust it to your taste.

I give the recipe as it appears in the book, and add my own notes and thoughts in italic. 

Well, enough talk.  Let's get cooking!

TESSA KIROS - THE RECIPE COLLECTION

The first recipe I want to share with you, comes from The Recipe Collection by Tessa Kiros.  I love this woman! She was born in London to a Finnish mother and Greek-Cypriot father, but grew up in South Africa.  She married an Italian and live in Italy today.  The food she likes to cook is a combination of her heritage and her experiences, and happen to be the type of food I love!

Her books are beautiful stories of all the places she lived and the food she ate.  And the photographs are stunning.  The recipe I share today contains the thing I love most in the food world - prawns!  It's a simple recipe containing a handful of ingredients but it packs a huge punch in terms of flavour. 

I've cooked it a number of times and it's never failed me.  Well, there's not much to mess up when you combine prawns, garlic and beer!  It doesn't matter where you are when you cook it, that first mouthful will transport you to a beach in Mozambique, with the feeling of the sand between your toes and the smell of the ocean just out of reach. 

PRAWNS IN BEER 

Serves 4 - 6 (but closer to 4 I'd say)

1 kg large raw prawns/shrimp

100 g butter

½ teaspoon sweet paprika (I only had smoked paprika so I used that)

A pinch of ground piri-piri (more if you like more of a bite)

1 teaspoon coarse salt

4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

185 ml beer (I just poured in the whole bottle and let it reduce in the pan)

Leave the heads and shells on the prawns, but cut down the back of each one so that they take on the flavour of the sauce.  Make sure the prawns are deveined (nobody likes to eat prawn poop!). Rinse well. 

Heat half the butter in a frying pan.  When it sizzles, add a layer of prawns pressing them down so that they are butterflied.  Cook until just done (it really doesn't take a long time at all - keep your eye on them!).  If there isn't room for all of them in your pan, remove them as they are cooked to make space for the rest.  Don't overcook them!

When all the prawns are cooked, place them all back in the pan and add the paprika, piri-piri, salt and some black pepper.  Cook for a few seconds to toast the spices, then add the garlic and the rest of the butter.  When you can smell the garlic (after a few minutes) remove the prawns to a plate.  Pour the beer into the pan and increase the heat to high so that it bubbles and reduces a little bit.  (At this point, I put in some of the prawn heads that fell off during the cooking process, to give the sauce a lovely, deep prawn flavour.)

Return the prawns to the pan and stir them around so that the sauce coats all the prawns.  Here, I took the liberty to add two heaping tablespoons of creme fraiche (or cultured cream as it is also sold) purely because I love the stuff.

Serve the prawns over rice, with some crusty bread or some potato wedges to mop up all that lovely sauce.

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Prawns in Beer

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