Pan Fried Garlic Prawns

Whenever I go out to eat, I will often order fish or some kind of seafood. But I can count on one hand the number of times I have cooked that kind of food at home in the last year.

Last Friday evening I had a hankering for prawns after having had tapas recently. I decided to just go ahead and wing it, without much of a recipe but just an idea of what flavours I was fancying.

I'm always surprised at how fast seafood cooks! I had to read the cooking instructions on the packet a few times to be certain. This is a great midweek meal - it's not cheap (prawns are surprisingly pricey!) but it's super quick and tasty. I decided to serve my prawns with some aromatic fried veggies and some bruchetta-style bread, but a hunk of warm buttered sourdough would also serve just as well!

Deep-fried Chilli Prawns

PILE OF YUM

I am going to preface this with what I said to my boyfriend just before I started cooking it: “If this goes terribly wrong, can we order takeout?”

So, this is way out of my comfort zone. I don’t normally deep fry anything and I’ve never cooked a prawn before IN MY LIFE.  So this is one of those, if *I* can do it, then anyone can! Though as a caveat, please be careful when deep frying. You do NOT want to get spattered with hot oil. It will burn you a lot, it is not a toy.

I just used the easiest prawns I could think of for my first foray: peeled, de-veined, cooked, frozen prawns. Simple! Next time, now that I have the technique down, I might get the real deal prawns. But these were bite-size, spicy, crispy balls of deliciousness!