Grilled prawns

Dear ladies.

Yes, some lovely ladies graced my plate yesterday. With, as you probably already know, some exceptionally uncomplicated spinach leaves that I nevertheless enjoyed far too much.

The lovely lady prawns. Lady prawns that looked as though they had stepped straight off the hot sand of the most beautiful beaches on the French Riviera. Grilled prawns.

I was worried about whether they would turn out well, whether they would be too dry. I wondered if I might have to serve some delicate little butter sauce with them. But they pulled it off. I think they pulled it off.

Dear ladies.

Yes, I’m working up to this, as I do to everything, with a certain amount of trepidation. After all, tomorrow won’t be 8 March, but the recipe will still be relevant. After all, this isn’t a personal diary, just a website, a particularly primitive one at that, with recipes. For prawns, too. Ladies. In a way. Too.

So, dear ladies, since this post (I’m posting it, aren’t I?) was written on 8 March 2015, and that date, as every year, is International Women’s Day, allow me to wish you health, happiness, beauty and so on. But above all, I wish with all my heart that each of you

has a mug like this who will serve you prawns like these

and with spinach, at that! Amen.

That was me, Jarząbek, talking to the wall 😉

At a glance:

Preparation time: up to 10 minutes

Marinating time: at least 3 hours

Serves: the recipe is for two people

How many calories: less than zero („Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”)

Ingredients for some rather good prawns from an electric grill:

• 400 grams of frozen, cooked prawns (the larger the better, and shelled)
• 100 ml of dry white wine (Chardonnay)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 1 red chilli
• 1 green chilli
• black pepper (preferably freshly ground)
• salt

Recipe for grilled prawns:

The most important thing in this recipe is preparing the prawns properly before grilling. You need to start at least 3 – 4 hours beforehand. The marinade isn’t complicated, but it should keep the grilled prawns from being bland and tasteless. Instead, they should have a pleasant, slightly crisp, aromatic „skin” when they come off the grill.

I thawed the prawns (in boiling water, taking care not to „cook them further” ;), dried them with kitchen paper and put them in a bowl (you can see it in the photos below). I added the chopped chillies to the bowl (with the seeds, definitely), along with the crushed and fairly finely chopped garlic cloves, and sprinkled lightly with salt and freshly ground pepper. I mixed gently by hand so that the marinade ingredients coated the prawns. I poured over the wine, olive oil and lime juice. I mixed gently once more, covered the bowl with aluminium foil and put it in the fridge (for almost 6 hours in my case).

When it was time to serve the starter, I heated my electric grill plate to its highest temperature and put all the prawns on it (unfortunately I didn’t take a photo, but it was nothing out of the ordinary :). You can put the pieces of chilli and garlic on the grill too; they’ll add extra aroma. Just whatever you do, don’t pour the entire marinade onto the grill, or you’ll end up cooking soup instead of grilling prawns.

After roughly 2 minutes, I turned them over. You need to take care not to burn them, but as you can see in the photos, it’s ideal if the prawns have that brownish skin. I cooked them similarly on the other side. Finally, for about a minute I mixed all the prawns around together, then kept cooking them, just turning them gently, for another minute, perhaps two.

The tender, definitely diet-friendly grilled prawns are ready. I served them, of course, with the spinach leaves I’d prepared at the same time (recipe for spinach with garlic). Honestly? Delicious! Enjoy.