Coconut Prawns with Sweet Chill and Ginger Dipping Sauce

When I first saw the book, In the Kitchen by Simmone Logue, I was in love with Simmone's serene and therapeutic way of creating her food. Her rustic and country style of cooking is so beautiful and I can see that all her food so rich in styles and flavours. In simple, everything looks so GOOD!!!

Yeah... everything looks so good in this book that I can't even decide what to cook. Hence, the indecisive me was asking my husband and son to pick the recipes that they want me to cook.

After hearing some rustling sounds like the book has been flipped for a couple of pages, I heard a firm and loud "I want this!!!"

"I love these! We always have coconut prawns with beers for our Friday pub." said my husband with a keen and celebrating face.

Prawns!!! I was mortified for a while when I heard the word, PRAWNS!!!  Remember I said before that I'm allergy to prawns and was having some drama cooking prawns tempura at here. Fortunately for this time, I have manged to overcome my prawn problem by buying myself a box of disposable food handling gloves. Silly me!!! Why didn't I think of this idea earlier???

Yes! I made it and managed to cook these fabulous coconut prawns accompanied with 100% homemade sweet chill and ginger dipping sauce. Although I can't taste of these prawns, I can judge by looking at my husband's and son's satisfying faces and clearly, I can see that they taste awesome!

Coconut Prawns with Sweet Chill and Ginger Dipping Sauce

Unlike most regular prawn fritters, these coconut prawns are made with a fusion of many styles...

Basic because it is so easy to cook.
Country because it is made from scratch and uses many beautiful and fresh produce.
Man food because it is great to enjoy with beers.
Asian's fusion because it has Chinese Thai flavours with ginger, chilli and coriander.

Easy? Absolutely! Let me show you how I cooked this...

First, I made the chilli dipping sauce and I need:

100g long red chillies, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 tiny knob (about 2 x 2 x 2 cm cube size after peeled) fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
5 coriander roots (keep the leaves to garnish later), washed and pat dried
1/2 cup (125ml) white vinegar
100g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Please note this amount is only one fifth of the amount written in the original recipe but will make enough sauce to serve 20 large king prawns. However, if you like to serve your prawns with more sauce, please feel free to make more.

And these are the chilli sauce ingredients ...

The ginger, garlic and chillies

The coriander roots.

To make the dipping sauce:

1) Place the chilli, garlic, ginger and coriander roots in a food processor. Add vinegar and process until smooth.

2) Pour mixture into a saucepan and place over low heat. Add sugar and salt and cook until the sugar dissolved.

3) Increase heat and bring mixture to boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 mins or until the sauce thickens. Season with extra salt, vinegar or sugar, according to your taste. Set aside to allow it to cool to room temperature.

The sauce will look like this... Thick and syrupy :)

Next, I fried the prawns and I need:

150g (1 cup) all purpose flour

freshly ground sea salt and black pepper to season
2 large eggs
125ml (1/2 cup) milk
170g (3 cups) coarsely shredded coconut

20 large raw king or any fresh prawns, peeled and devined, leaving the tails intact
cooking oil, enough for deep frying

To fry the prawns:

1) Combine flour, salt and ground black pepper in a large bowl.

Season plain flour with salt and ground black pepper.

2) In another bowl, whisk eggs and milk together.

milk + egg

3) Place coconut in a third bowl.

4) Pour about 10 cm (4 inches) of cooking oil in a large saucepan and heat oil until 180°C (350°F) or until a coconut flake dropped into the oil starts to float up and bubble around it.

5) Take the prawns, one at a time. Dip each of them in the flour first, then the egg mixture and coat them with the coconut making sure that every part of the prawns are well covered with coconut. The original recipe says that the coconut coated prawns should be laid flat in a tray, covered and refrigerate until required but I just fry them immediately after coating.

Goodness me! I'm happy that the prawn-allergy me can handle fresh prawns now.
All thanks to these food handling gloves!!!

So here we go ...
dip dip coat coat fry ...

6) Cook five prawns at a time, for about 3 mins each batch until the prawns are nice and golden. Use paper towel to drain any excess oil. Serve immediately with the dipping sauce.

To serve:
the above chilli sauce
coriander leaves, washed and pat dried, to garnish
lime or lemon wedges

"Sweetie! The coconut prawns are ready!!!"

Almost almost ready... Let me assemble everything together in my serving board.

It took me like 1 hour plus to cook these prawns and sauce and everything is gone within the next 10 minutes!!! And the prawn allergy me didn't even eat any of these!!! Goodness! Although I can't enjoy any of these prawns, I'm happy that I have made my husband and son very happy by cooking these prawns for them.

Love these coconut prawns? And I guess that you might love this beautiful book too!

In the Kitchen by Simmone Logue

Why? It is a gorgeous cookbook with beautiful rustic and country style and flavours.
See these...

I like this simple and elegant finger food for easy entertaining.

All of Simone's desserts including this pumpkin pie are looking so stunning!

Gosh! This is my kind of lemon curd cheesecake!

"Mum, I want this!!!"
Originally, I wanted to bake this layered chocolate sour cherry cake for my son but sadly, the Aus cherries are not in season yet.
Maybe 6 months later, we'll see...

Love the fact that I'm the proud owner of this beautiful book and if you want to own this book too, you may wish to know that it is available now in most retail or online book shops selling at the retail price of AUD$39.99.

Can't decide? I would love to show you more of this book and so stay tune for my subsequent post.

As this post is specially written to review this book, I'm sorry that I have agreed to the publisher that I can't publish the recipes in this book in this post. However, if you really wish to cook these coconut prawns with sweet chilli ginger dipping sauce, please read my post in details, you will see that you can actually do it without a written recipe as I have fully illustrated the process very thoroughly to you. *Hint*

Before ending this post, I like to thank Murdoch Books for giving me this opportunity to do this review. I like to make a disclaimer here that I'm not paid to do this and like to share my most honest opinions with everyone who read this review.

I hope that you will appreciate the beauty of this book as much as I do.

This post is linked at Cookbook Countdown #6 organised by Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Emily from Emily's Cooking (Makan2) Foray.

Happy Cooking

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