Baked and Stuffed Butterfly Prawns with Hollandaise, Gouda and Swiss Cheese

Help for My Butterfly Prawns

December 25, 2010 – Home – Presented with a huge container of fresh prawns, I was racking my brain for things to do when I decided on stuffing, baking and serving them with Hollandaise sauce. It was perfect! Except for one problem – I had no idea how to make Hollandaise sauce. Enter, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child.

It was simple. It was accessible. It. Was. Brilliant!

Baked and Stuffed Butterflly Prawns with Hollandaise, Gouda and Swiss Cheese

The Hollandaise Sauce (with my twist)
Everything starts with an electric blender. Genius (cue angelic reverb). Separate six eggs, taking only the yolks for this recipe and pour into the blender jar. Add a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and the same amount of white pepper. Drizzle in the juice from two lemons. Buzz the entire thing for five seconds at high speed. Adjust the seasoning according to taste. I like the hint of heat from the cayenne, and a bit of tang from the lemon to cut the richness of the sauce.

On a separate sauce pan, melt a brick of butter on low heat until frothy. Start the blender up again and buzz in high speed. Open the access hatch from the jar’s lid and gingerly stream the hot, melted butter into the blending sauce. The sauce will quickly turn into scrambled egg if you do more than just pour in a continuous, thin stream. When you’ve finished the butter, continue to blend for five more seconds and you should be set! Easy. Rich. Delicious.

Assembling the Dish
Butterfly two-thirds of your prawns by slitting down its back from the base of the head down to the tip of the tail. Remove the intestines – those aren’t pretty and taste nasty. Make your incision deep enough without splitting it in half. Keep the flesh attached to the now split shell. I got through a kilo of it with NPR playing on my earphones to keep myself entertained. Open up your prawns and arrange in a row on a baking pan – not a cookie sheet or all the juice from your prawns will make a mess in your oven. Lightly season the flesh with salt, pepper and an extra drizzling of extra virgin olive oil.

Clean and butterfly the rest of your prawns but remove them from the shells this time and chop into small pieces. This will be what you stuff the butterflied prawns with. Prawn on prawn. Yum.

On a saucepan, sweat some chopped onions over extra virgin olive oil and add the chopped prawns. Season with salt and pepper. Cook the prawns until they are pink, but not fully cooked. Add a touch of cream and half of your Hollandaise towards the end and take the pan off the fire.

Scoop some of the hot mixture into the butterflied prawns, then top of with sauteed garlic. Engulf the prawns with the rest of the Hollandaise sauce. Top with shavings of Swiss cheese, Gouda or Parmesan. I did two of the three.

Preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit . Place the baking pan inside and let cook for another 15 to 20 minutes. You can garnish with some crushed, dried oregano before serving, if you’d like.

Mushroom Rice

Mushroom Rice

December 25, 2010 – Home – This variation of the Mushroom Rice is definitely a recipe anyone can do and customize as needed. If you know how to steam rice, you’ll know how to do this.

Take one medium-sized onion and chop. Depending on how much mushroom you want, you can end up using up the whole can of sliced mushrooms or just some of it. These usually come in a broth that you should remember to set aside – we’ll be using that.

On a pot, drizzle a few swirls of extra virgin olive oil. Sweat the onions. At this point, you can add in your flavor components and customize this dish. Add in the sliced mushrooms and saute until they take a nice caramelized look, taking care not to burn them. Add in a cup of rice that you’ve cleaned beforehand and saute them with the mushrooms and onions. Feel free to add a touch more extra virgin olive oil if the pan starts to dry out. Sprinkle a teaspoon of salt and white pepper.

Measure a cup and half of steaming liquid – use the mushroom broth and fill the rest with water (or chicken broth if you have it). Get you pot to a rolling boil at medium fire until the grains absorb most of the liquid. After 10 minutes, or when most of the liquid has been absorbed, continue cooking the rice for an additional five minutes at low heat. Try a few bites of the rice to check if cooked.

I wouldn’t have chicken broth immediately accessible if I’m doing this impromptu. What I’d do is crumble half a cube of chicken bullion while I saute the rice. That works really well for extra flavor instead of just plain water for my steaming liquid.