The Australia day prawn cocktail

Yesterday was Australia Day and I was damn well looking to impress last night… and by that I mean I thought I was looking damn handsome and would make myself a killer Australia Day prawn cocktail. What more could a man want? Maybe his darling wiffy? Well, she’ll be home tmoz so in the true spirit of everything Australia day is meant to be, I shall deal with it and make me a slap up feed for one…

I’ve made a bit of a mango ‘saw instead of the old iceberg lettuce scenario (so I guess it would be more apt if I called this “Prawns with mango ‘slaw”), even though I am not really a fan of mango in a savoury meal. But I thought to myself “shit Graz, let’s just give it a go”. And give it a go we did. And by crikey it worked! It was really good, especially graced with the presence of a pile of big fat fresh-as-fuck king prawns. I think the big thing here is you need to actually like mango at the start of the piece. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it in savoury applications (as was the case with me. Give me green mango any day), you just NEED to like mango at the start. Don’t like mango? Don’t eat them… what are you? Simple?

Prawns with mango ‘slaw (for just you)

A fat handful or two of the best cooked prawns you can lay yer hands on. Steal them if possible, this place was built on a solid foundation of convicts after all

2 cups shredded cabbage (mandolin, yeah), steal that too. And the rest of the stuff you need, actually

1 carrot, grated

1 mango, sliced

1 tablespoon pickled ginger, chopped

1 spring onion/shallot, sliced

a splash of lemon juice

seasoning

cocktail sauce (marie rose) to serve (recipe below)

• Combine everything except prawns and cocktail sauce
• Put the salad in something you can eat out of
• Hit it with a couple of tablespoons of cocktail sauce
• Give the prawns a nice home on top of the salad
• I’m going to garnish it with a few extra sliced shallots/spring onions just because I’m pretty keen to impress myself enough to get me some tonight… there is definitely  something wrong with that sentence… although, I’m not sure what.
• Serve with a lot of beer and you will defo be getting some tonight

Cocktail/marie rose sauce… my way

1 cup good mayonnaise

¼ cup tomato ketchup

a small pinch of saffron threads, steeped in a teaspoon of hot water for 10 minutes

a splash of Tabasco

a splash of Worcestershire sauce

a splash of brandy

seasoning

• Mix it all up