April 2024 Comfort food on the Cut
AS I sit aboard Sabi Star in our Caen Hill Marina berth, and type this, we are entering spring and temperatures are picking up – yet it can still be quite chilly of an evening.
If we go back a few months, October is always a month Bren and I look forward to. For us, it means ready access to unpeeled, plump, juicy, Argentinian jumbo king prawns. Lidl imports them, deep frozen, directly from Argentina. They are obviously harvested on a strictly controlled sustainable yield basis. This is how it should be, and they are only available until early January, or thereabouts. In the three months they are available, however, we enjoy them virtually every Saturday evening… and even keep a few bags in the freezer to see us through!
Perhaps having spent my entire boyhood years close to Mozambique had an influence on my taste buds liking peri-peri prawns so much. The Argentinian prawns at Lidl come deep-frozen in a 720g bag, and on average there are about 65 prawns in the bag, which at just over £9 is a good deal, we think.
Normally, Bren prepares them by first defrosting them by laying the prawns between a few sheets of paper towel. This absorbs all the water as they defrost. She then sautés them in butter with a tablespoon of light olive oil, so the butter doesn’t burn. To this, she adds fresh chopped garlic, dry chilli flakes, or in place of the chilli flakes, finely chopped fresh bird’s eye chillies (my favourite). These bird eye chillies are available in most UK supermarket chains and are imported fresh from South Africa, Kenya and Bulgaria. Strange as it is, I find the Bulgarian chillies have the most heat, followed by the Kenyan chillies.
We enjoy our prawns on a bed of fried rice, to which Bren adds chopped mushrooms, with chopped green and red peppers. The rice mix is merely stir-fried. Once all is ready, we each enjoy about 20 prawns on a bed of rice. Alongside our plate of prawns is a small bowl of warm water, with sliced lemon in it, we use this to rinse the oil off our fingers after we’ve peeled our prawns. There are
also two little bowls, one with olive oil and finely chopped chillies, and one with olive oil and finely chopped garlic. These are to drizzle over the peeled prawns and rice before you get stuck in. The leftover prawns we keep for the following day, and after peeling them we each place about 10 in a half avocado, and lightly drizzle them with Soy sauce and chilli. It’s a real treat.
Wine is obviously always a good accompaniment to prawns, or for that matter, any seafood, and my favourite is an Italian Pinot Grigio, although Bren only drinks red wine so opts for a glass of red (or two) with her meal. Sabi Star might not be a sun-saturated
Mozambique beach, alongside the turquoise Indian Ocean, however, on a chilly night while seated in our toasty warm boat enjoying plump peeled prawns, I’m quite content with our fabulous food that warms the soul.