I love prawns – from the tiniest brown shrimp, to these – gargantuan black tiger prawns, and I found myself creating a recipe in my head that would do them justice. Grilled with garlic butter seemed to be the simple and obvious (and delicious!) treatment. But what else? As I strolled through the supermarket, I pieced together a simple pesto – sweet red peppers, chilli, garlic, parsley, pine nuts, parmesan… and a little lime. I butterflied these prawns myself – but it’s worth mentioning you dont have to – any good fishmonger will prepare these for you (although if you wish to try, I have some notes on preparing them here,) so cooking with them is as simple as deciding what flavours to pile on top.
These would work amazingly on the bbq, and can be butterflied and ready to go the night before.
A crowd pleaser and an excellent dish for a dinner party show-off or self indulgent home cook. These prawns with red pepper and chilli pesto are fresh, quick, and delicious
Ingredients
- Three Giant Tiger prawns, or size large tiger prawns, butterflied
- -
- For the garlic butter:
- 3 tablespoons quality butter, room temperature
- half clove garlic, grated or crushed
- -
- For the Red pepper and chilli pesto:
- 2 picarella peppers - 1 red, 2 orange
- 1/4 small chilli, seeds removed
- Sprig parsley
- Extra virgin olive oil
- half a clove garlic
- Lime
- 1 teaspoon pine nuts
- 20g parmesan
Instructions
- In a small bowl, combine the garlic, butter and salt, so make a smooth soft butter.
- Place prawns on a foil lined baking tray and spread the butterflied side with the garlic butter, add a crack of black pepper, and set prawns to one side
- Now make the pesto. In a blender, combine the peppers, chilli, parsley, pine nuts, garlic, and parmesan, with a generous glub of olive oil and a squeeze of lime. Blend until you have a very rough pesto.
- At this point, taste your pesto - if it needs more salt, add parmesan, if you'd like it to be sharper, add more lime, if you prefer more garlic, or chilli, add a little more to the blender and blend until you have a runny (but not too smooth) pesto.
- Heat the grill to its highest heat setting, and place the garlic buttered prawns underneath
- Keep an eye on your prawns, the cooking will depend on their size, and your grill. The prawns are cooked when the outer shell is crispy and the prawn is a creamy white colour all the way through.
- Plate your dish - I like some lime squeezed over the prawns and a side salad, with my pesto in a seperate bowl do I can spoon on as much as I like.
Notes
By all means you can make the pesto with a pestle and mortar if you wish - but be warned, this is a time-consuming process as the peppers will take a while to break down.
Be sure to thoroughly cook your prawns – there should be no grey colouring on the underside of the prawn when you lift it from its shell
This pesto is an excellent accompaniment to all white seafood, or spooned over pasta and ravioli. It keeps in the fridge for a few days, if you want to make a larger batch or prep the night before.
If you cant get the larger variety of prawns, any smaller ones will do, treat them exactly the same as the larger ones, butterflied and grilled, just keep an eye on the cooking as smaller prawns take a much longer time to cook.