… King Prawns & Sun-dried Pan Bread
I did not cook a 15 Minute Meal on Monday. I went out for a meal for my friend, Ed’s, birthday.
Over the course of two days I went to four supermarkets and two smaller shops in an attempt to get the large raw shell-on king prawns required by the recipe. I failed. The best I could do was large(ish) raw pealed king prawns.
I think doing the fish dishes is going to be the biggest challenge with this book for a number of reasons.
I really like eating fish and shellfish. I don’t eat enough fish and I certainly don’t cook enough fish. This means that I will be less confident with the fish dishes, simply because I am not as practiced at cooking with fish as I should be. The two fish dishes I have chosen so far are testament to this. They have been easy ones. The first meal I cooked was the Mighty Mackerel dish. Mackerel is a forgiving fish. Other than literally burning it, you can’t really overcook mackerel. In fact having a crispy, slightly charred, skin adds to the flavour. I have cooked mackerel quite a lot on the beach over an open fire – it’s easy. This meal was prawns and in fact it was only the four king prawns that required cooking. Again you can’t really go too wrong here.
Getting the fish is also going to be a challenge. Some of the fish will not always be available in the supermarket and I am only really able to get to a fishmonger on a Saturday and even then only sometimes. I also have a habit of going to the supermarket quite late in the evening. Very often I am there after the fish counter has been shut down. I think I am going to have to be more organised with the fish dishes otherwise when I get to the end of the project I’ll be left with all the dishes where the ingredients are harder to source. What I think I’ll do is have a shopping list for two or three different fish recipes, go the fish counter first and depending on what I can get, this will determine the rest of my shopping.
So I cooked this meal for my very good friends Jeff and Lori as well as Gavin. Jeff leads the church I go to. I say cooked. This meal actually involved very little cooking. This meal did involve making bread. A very quick flat bread, cooked in a frying pan. You make the dough in a food processor and mine was a bit wet. The first attempt at rolling failed. I had to add some flour, kneed it a little and then it worked well. I would say I lost a minute here.
It was mainly chopping salad placing prawns on the salad and making the Marie Rose sauce. You cook the flat bread in a frying pan – turning once. Toast the seeds and quickly cook the raw king prawns. That’s all the actual cooking involved.
I loved this dish. Everyone did. It looked great and felt good and fresh and healthy. This is the second time I have cooked bread in a 15 Minute Meal and again I am delighted at what can be achieved in such a small amount of time.
This was a quick meal. 14 minutes exactly. I would have done it in well under fourteen minutes if I didn’t have problems with the dough.
I have meals booked in for every night for the rest of the week up to Saturday. A mixture of cooking at home and at other people’s houses. No doubt I’ll do one on Sunday as well. I think this project is beginning to take over my life a bit!
How much: £8.56.
How long: Fourteen minutes.
Who with: Jeff, Lori, Gavin.
