Flambéed Pastis Prawns
This is such a gorgeous salad for a hot mid-summer afternoon or evening. It serves great as either lunch, a starter or a light main.
Equipment
- mandoline
- zester
- garlic press
Ingredients
- 12 king (red) prawns
- 50 gr lamb's lettuce
- ½ fennel
- 3 oranges
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 sprigs parsley
- Pastis 51 / Ricard
- butter
- olive oil
- pepper & salt
- 1 flute (French bread)
Instructions
Prep
- Peel the prawns (if you use frozen prawns, thaw them first) and put them on some paper towel.
- Using a zester, grate some thin strips of the peel of an orange (only the orange; the white is bitter). Finely chop your parsley and mix it with the peels.
- Squeeze the juice from 1 orange. Peel the other 2 oranges and remove all segments (see picture).
- Cut the stems of the fennel, cut the fennel in half and remove the hard heart from half a fennel. Shave half the tuber into very thin slices with a mandolin. Often there's some little herb-like leaves on the fennel. If there are, keep these to garnish later.
- Peel the garlic cloves.
Let's flame
- Fry the prawns briefly in olive oil over high heat on both sides (make sure the pan and oil are hot before you put the shrimps in). When they are nice and pink, but not yet cooked on the inside, turn the heat a bit lower, add the butter and squeeze the garlic cloves over the butter in the pan. Fry the garlic briefly (it should not burn) and then add a generous dash of Pastis. If you dare you can flambé the prawns, but just letting the Pastis cook for a while is totally fine as well.
- Then add the orange juice and lower the heat. Allow the Pastis and orange juice to reduce slightly. Likely by now the prawns will be cooked, so you can take them out while reducing the sauce to prevent over cooking the prawns.
- Season the prawns and sauce with salt and pepper.
Plating
- Divide the lamb's lettuce and fennel among the plates and then add the prawns, oranges, olives and the orange pastis sauce to each plate. Finally garnish with the parsley-zest mixture and the fennel-herbs.
- Serve with some French bread to dip the sauce.