Cheese and Bacon Stuffed Prawns with Salsa Fresca

For round 3 of Mongol's multi-week challenge I knew I'd be making the cutoff after the runaway success of Escape from Fudge Mountain so I was thinking hard all week about what to do. It was very hard to make a decision, I'm a serious shrimp fiend and I wracked my brain trying to think of something very tasty. I ended up heaidng to a local fishmonger in hopes of finding inspiration.

...and I did...

I met the love of my life...

This:

is Patsy the Prawn, that's a standard quarter next to her luscious meaty body.

I bought six of these luscious things before realizing that they were $18.00cdn a pound, but love has no pricetag.

Anyway, the moment I had them I knew what I was making. It was a horribly cold week and memories of trips to warmer climates were forcing themselves into my head unasked already. Combine Shrimp and Winter Holidays and my favorite memories of a trip to Mazatlan come to mind. While I wasn't a huge fan of the city the shrimp there were absolutely amazing. Boatloads of them fresh every single day and I very rarely had anything else for meals while I was there.

In particular there was a new years eve where we'd had Giant Prawns stuffed with cheddar and bacon and sauteed with veggies.

I'd found my inspiration... Unfortunately making a giant Shrimp Cocktail was out, so I went with plan B.

I decided to one up my memory and elaborate a bit, the following is the result.

Ingredients

Prawns/Shrimp

• The measurements in this recipe would be good for probably 8 of these giant things, I had a decent amount of batter and stuffing leftover. Not a horrid thing as I just stuffed a big chicken breast with it for the next night.

Batter

• 3/4 Cup AP Flour
• 1/2 Cup of Rice Flour
• 3/4 cup of Cornstarch
• 1 TSP Salt
• 3.5 TSP Baking Powder
• 9 fl. oz Water
• 3 tbsp canola oil.

• Note you can just use all AP flour, but it will likely take extra water.

Cheese Filling

• 1 to 1 1/2 Cups of Cheese of your choice (I used a Jalapeno jack cheese as unfortunately mexican cheese is very hard to find in this part of Canada and I didn't feel like taking a road trip today.
• Cilantro to taste (I would use less next time, a small handful would be good)
• 1/2 Cup of Chopped Green Onion
• 1 Head of Roasted Garlic
• Dash of Lime Juice
• 1 small chile pepper

Toast Style Salsa Fresca

• 3 Small Tomatoes (Quartered)
• Cilantro to taste
• 2 TBSP's Lime Juice
• 1/2 Cup White Onion (Minced)
• 1/2 Cup Green Onion (Minced)
• 1 Head Roasted Garlic (or to taste)
• 1-3 small jalapeno or similiar peppers.

Also

• Oil for frying

Method

Prep

• Buy your shrimp from a nice fishmonger, not the freezer section at Safeway or Kroger's this is a dish that really requires nice juicy shrimp flavour or the pepper will overpower it.

Batter

It's best to start with the batter as you should leave it to sit for an hour before actually using it.

• Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl then gradually mix in the water until you have a smooth batter. The amount of water needed may vary depending on your flour.

• Get it to this sort of consistency goopy but running enough that it still pours slowly off a spoon.

• Set aside for an hour while you do everything else

Filling

• Basically you're just trying to make a filling that fits your taste, I decided to go green with cilantro for flavour and colour but if you're not a cilantro fan a straight cheese and bacon and garlic would be great too.

• Unfortunately for the life of me I could not find the blade for the big food processor at the house I'm housesitting at, so I made two small batches in the mini-chopper.

• First I cooked my bacon until it was cooked but not super crispy and prechopped it a bit

It wouldn't be Iron Chef SA without bacon in something...

• I then combined it with the other filling ingredients until I had a nice clingy paste. This is important because unless you have really co-operative prawns you will need it to cling a bit during the battering process.

Apologies for the bad contrast shot, didn't notice the flash was on until after.

Toast's no-doubt bastardized Salsa Fresca

• Mix the ingredients in the food processor (prechopping when necessary)

• Let stand 30 mins for the flavours to emerge.

Stuffing the Prawns

• Shell and devein your prawns if they aren't already. I sadly had to de-tail two of mine as they just weren't being co-operative. If you don't know your shrimp look up deveining online, the "vein" is essentially the shrimp's poopchute and can be gritty with sand and/or bitter with waste.

• My chinese cooking teacher told me ages ago to mix your shrimp with cornstarch then rinse away the cornstarch before frying as it gives a crunchier texture from the resulting slurry. No idea if it works but it's ingrained in me by now.

• Butterfly them if they weren't already then spread some of your filling inside, getting as much in while still being able to fold it around. Secure with toothpicks in such a way that they'll be easy to remove after frying.

Patsy's all tarted up like a whore now... good things she's getting covered up before going out on the town.

Battering and Frying

• Heat up your oil until it's nice and hot, I used a wok as I don't have a DF.

• Mix up your batter again, adding the oil in the process.

• I found the easiest way to batter these was to lay them down filling side up in a bowl with some batter then spoon it over until it was covered. Unfortunately this was the most usable photo I got out of that process.

Patsy's ready for a hot bath...

• Let the shrimp drain and cool a bit then plate with the salsa fresca.

The Money Shot(s)

A shot of the filling oozing out slowly after I we sliced Patsy open.

The filling shot makes me want to go back for seconds.

The Post Game

This was easily one of my favorite things that I've ever made. While they certainly would have been tasty just sauteed as well I think the crunchyness of the batter here really combined well with the mix of flavours inside. The batter is also light enough that it doesn't overpower the flavours with greasyness.

The salsa-fresca provided a nice texture contrast with the smoothness of the tomatoes adding another layer. It was especially good going from bite with sauce to bite without sauce as we ate. The size of the shrimp basically meant that one or two was enough for anyone though, they were especially rich even without considering the cheese filling.