European · Starter · From the menu Sobremesa
Prawn on focaccia, black garlic, chilli
Gamba sobre focaccia, ajo negro, guindilla
A single large prawn, cooked hard and fast, on a square of hot focaccia with black garlic butter and chilli. Eaten with the fingers, which is the point of the Sobremesa menu.
Ninety seconds of cooking and everything else prepped. The only number worth arguing about is the black garlic: the reference figure is around twenty grams per four servings, so thirty for six, which is less than it sounds because black garlic is concentrated and sweet in a way raw garlic is not.
Ingredients
- 6 large raw prawns, peeled and deveined, tail segment left on
- 6 squares of good focaccia, about 7 cm
- 30 g black garlic
- 120 g soft butter
- 1 red chilli, half finely chopped and half sliced
- 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Flat parsley, flaked salt
Method
- Mash the black garlic to a paste and beat it into the soft butter with the chopped chilli, a squeeze of lemon and a good pinch of salt. Roll it in paper and chill.
- Run a knife down the back of each prawn and lift out the dark vein. Pat them dry.
- Split the focaccia squares horizontally, brush the cut faces with olive oil and toast them cut side down in a dry pan until crisp and hot.
- Get a pan very hot with the olive oil, just to smoking. Lay the prawns in and leave them about a minute, until they are spotty brown and the edges have turned pink.
- Turn them, take the pan straight off the heat, and give them thirty seconds more. They are ready when all but the very centre has gone opaque.
- Add a thick slice of the black garlic butter and roll the prawns in it as it melts in the residual heat.
- Sit each prawn on a square of focaccia, spoon the pan butter over, and finish with sliced chilli, parsley and flaked salt. Serve immediately, on a board, no cutlery.
- If you can get them heads on, cook the heads separately for a minute and put them on the board too. Half the flavour of a prawn is in the head and most people are pleased to be given permission.
Serve it with. It is the opening bite of the Sobremesa menu. Cold fino or cava, standing up.