Breaded Prawns with a Plum Dipping Sauce

This ones a dipping sauce. You could can it and store it in a jar like a jam or a chutney. After making this batch I kept it handy and used it up by eating it with soft cheese spread on toast, notably the soft goats cheese I blogged about on 27/03/2012.

Ingredients
200g ripe Plums
200ml Water
100ml Rice Vinegar
2 Limes
3 small Green Chillis
2.5 cube of Fresh Ginger
1 Onion
100g Brown Sugar

So, you need to wash and chop the plums, juice the limes, de-seed and finely chop the chillis, mince the ginger and dice the onion.

Then add all the ingredients to the pan with a pinch of salt, bring to the boil and just let simmer. Keep an eye on the sauce and every now and then skim off any scum or impurities that may rise to the top.

Leave this to simmer away until reduced to a jam-like thickness.

And once thats done, leave to cool beore storing in a jar. Leaving this a day or 2 will allow the flavours to mull and develop in the jar.

As I mentioned this makes a great every day sauce for dipping and spreading and eating with cheese. As you've de-seeded the chillis it'll be non offensive enough for all tastes. However, I thought I would prepare something a little more interesting.

You will need:
Raw prawns
Bread crumbs
1 egg, maybe 2 depending on how many prawns you have
Plain flour

If you don't have ready made bread crumbs to hand then they can be prepared easily enough. Take some fresh bread and pull off all the crust.

Pull it into little bits and pop in the food processor until you have fine crumbs. Then spread the crumbs out on a dry baking tray and bake in the oven at the lowest setting until the crumbs are stale and dry, but not toasted. Season them fairly heavily with salt and pepper.

Now prepare your prawns. Mine were already shelled, but needed de-veining and butterflying. To do that make a shallow slit along the belly and pull out the vein (the gut) from tail to head. then make a deeper cut going almost going all the way through to the back to allow you to flatten out the prawn.

Now you need to be organised and set up a little production line. Have your crumbs spread out on a plate, beat the egg into a bowl and have another plate covered with flour. Have a baking tray foiled and oiled at the ready. You need to dredge the prawns through the flour, dip them in the egg, coat them in the bread crumbs and then place them straight on the tray.

Now of course these would be great fried, but I developed a taste for the low fat option of baking them. They'll need about 10-15 minutes in the oven at 200degC, then turning and another 10-15 minutes. At the end of which they should be crispy and golden and perfect for dipping.

Breading meat like this is a great way to prepare it and really not too much hassle once you've got the hang of it. It's quite a fun hands on process as well. If you can't be bothered with de-veining a whole bag of prawns every time then chicken strips lend them selves particularly well to it if you add some paprika, more pepper and some onion powder to the bread crumb seasoning. They're great with wedges and ketchup.