Prawn Cocktails

Yum yum prawn cocktail! I don't know about you, but these are one of the things I look forward to the -most- when I go to an asian restaurant for some 'exotic' dining. Exotic in that I have no idea how they manage to make half of the delicious things they do. I'm having a very ....asian themed cooking thing at the moment, thus, prawn coctail! For this you will need:

400g of prawns, frozen, raw and peeled. Make sure that they are such, and not 'cutlets', prawn cutlets still have the shell on the tail. Add or reduce as determined by how many people you are serving. Around 9-13 decent sized prawns per person.
1 tsp of butter
2 cloves of garlic
1-2 leaves of iceburg lettuce
1 1/2 TableSpoons of Mayonaise
1-2 tsps of tomato sauce
1/2 tsp of worchestershire sauce.

Peel the papery shell off of the garlic, chop off the 'hard' end -- that's where the head of garlic used to be -- slice and dice and chop both of the cloves into small pieces, the smaller the better, as it lets more of the garlic's oil out to flavour the prawns.

The butter is purely to stop the prawns (or shrimp, I guess, but they are TINY) from sticking to the bottom of the frying pan. Fill said pan up with the prawns, making sure that they're fairly evenly spread out, and put the lid on. Walk away! ...Nigh literally. You only have to stir them periodically, to make sure that they're not sticking. They start out grey in colour, so how do you know when they're cooked? When they're all pink!



See? In the process, there are little pink bits from where I've stirred. Don't be alarmed if you end up with a LOT of water in the pan. It's come out of the prawns as they've thawed, and it's not like you're making a sauce with the water and butter :)



When your prawns are around 3/4ths cooked you can start preparing the sauce and garnish for your prawn cocktails. The mayonaise, worchestershire sauce and tomato sauce, remember that you want it to be a fairly pale pink colour, so tailor the mixes of liquid colour accordingly! Not muuuuuch worchestershire sauce. In the first mix, it was too dark so I added more mayonaise, thusly;



Cocktail sauce mixed, slice up the lettuce leaves. For this, put the smaller inside the larger, fold and wrap them in amongst each other like ...well... a wrap. Burrito, if you want the spanish version, and start slicing from one end -- end, not side. The smaller part of the thing. Slice it finely, so that each cut is about a half a centimetre thick, or less. Chop chop chop, and put the lettuce in two small bowls -- arranged similar to a birds nest, with walls that can let the lettuce be seen, and provides a bit of a support for the prawns.

Take said prawns off of the heat, and serve, placing them on the lettuce.



Adding the sauce last. It's best if you wait about five minutes or so, before serving up the prawns, so that they cool down a little. -- Warm lettuce is not very nice. All in all, it is quick, simple, and very easy to make, and it makes for a wonderful entree to a larger meal, or a snack for when you're not -really- hungry, but you want to eat something and it's around dinner time.

Deliciousness Delivered.