This is my copycat of a dish I had at a posh Sydney restaurant. Do you ever go to restaurants, order expensive dishes, pay a fortune and think “heck, I could make this myself!”? That’s exactly what I did in this case. It’s such a simple, beautiful flavour combination which was super easy to replicate at home. Ahem. OK. To be entirely truthful, I may have rather extensively grilled the poor waiter to get as much detail as I could…and he actually had to go into the kitchen to get all the answers! 🙂 The extra garlic flavour is what caught my attention. Turns out the prawns (shrimp) were drizzled with melted roasted garlic butter. The special finishing touch. Easy enough to copy. BUT roasting garlic takes around 50 minutes in the oven which, in my books, is not worth doing when you only need a teeny bit for the butter. So I decided to make mine with a garlic infused brown butter instead which takes around 7 minutes. The flavour is remarkably similar!
For a dish like this which is so simple but elegant, the key is using GOOD SHRIMP / PRAWNS! Prawns are a treat in my books. Raw whole fresh prawns in Sydney are around $20 – $25 per kg ($10 – $12.50 per lb). When I splurge on prawns, my biggest fear is overcooking them. Have you ever had overcooked prawns? They’re bouncy, kind of like rubber. Horrid. It’s a crime to overcook prawns in my books. And it is way easier to tell if a prawn is perfectly cooked than it is to know if a steak is perfectly medium rare. See? Simple as this:
I really recommend purchasing either whole prawns and peeling them yourself or buying peeled fresh prawns. Frozen prawns just aren’t the same! The crowning glory of this is the brown butter. You do not need very much! I know it sounds utterly indulgent, but actually it is not that bad! You do need 3 tablespoons to make the brown butter, but you only end up using 2 tablespoons because the rest gets discarded. So don’t feel so guilty. You deserve a treat. Or find a reason to indulge / celebrate a romantic evening. This is perfect for that! – Nagi x
