Prawns two ways

Yesterday we bought a deep fat fryer which resulted in almost perfect frites to accompany our moules.  This evening I decided to have another play with it as I was so impressed by its performance.

I wanted to do something with tempura prawns and so came up with this.

I a large pan I gently cooked together a finely sliced onion, a couple of sliced chillies,  a few cloves of chopped garlic, a little grated ginger, some halved cherry tomatoes and a couple of teaspoons of sun- dried tomato paste in a little olive oil and then added a touch of seasoning.  All cooked together for about five minutes for the flavours to develop.  This was set aside until almost ready to serve when I then re-heated it, added a few medium sized raw prawns and a couple of handfuls of frozen peas and cooked until the prawns were pink and juicy and the peas cooked through.

This was all mixed in with enough cooked linguine for the two of us and sprinkled with some chopped chives; mainly for colour but also for the light oniony bite.

For the 'two way' prawns I made a light tempura batter using a mixture of two-thirds plain flour to one third cornflower.  This was mixed together with enough chilled soda water to an emulsion paint-like consistency.  It's important not to over work the batter and a few small lumps of unmixed flour add to rather than detract from the finished prawns.  When the prawn sauce was almost ready I dipped half a dozen lovely big prawns in the batter and deep fried them at 180* until crisp and golden.  Out onto some kitchen roll to drain while the linguine was drained and added to the sauce and then served together as a finished dish.

The crunch of the prawns was delicious with the softness of the prawn linguine with a lovely bite of chilli as a back note.

Well worth the effort and expense of the deep fat frier.