A very prawny post

I've always liked Penang prawn noodles. I've found the best so far to be in a little corner coffee shop in PJ that offers mainly penang hawker food. The prawn noodles there are to die for but for the sake of my cholesterol levels and also since parking is a hassle, I try to limit it to once or twice in a month. Check this bowl of beauty out.

It's a notch above what you get in Penang because nowadays a bowl of noodles in Penang is but snack sized and the prawns? Calling them shrimps will be an exaggeration because they take the shrimps and slice them further into wafer thin slices. Talk about knife skills!

Thus nowadays I don't bother to have to travel up north anymore for my prawn noodles because everyone I've brought to sample this dish  agrees it is just as good. Heartier, in fact.

Here are some other excellent prawn dishes I've had over the years.  This here is a simple dish of "bak cheok har" which simply means blanched prawns that are served with a heavenly dipping sauce. The prawns are so fresh and sweet that you need nary anything else in the broth while cooking. The best version I've had of this dish is from Guangzhou, China which is great for these food, but not my favourite city in the world.



There one here is simply panfried and served with a twist of lemon on the side. This I had in a tapas bar in Barcelona. The prawn flavour was very intense and sweet. Boy, I really do need to check my cholesterol levels soon. But then again I suppose when you are having food in a tapas bar in Barcelona, the atmosphere alone adds to the quality of the food? Not true, we had some lemons there as well. This though, was remarkable. I wonder if they were carabineros..

This little dish held some gems of peeled shrimps sizzling in olive oil with some garlic slices and dried chillies and a sprig of rosemary. It was divine! Boy could not get enough of it and insisted we return for seconds the next night! What can I say, if you strike gold you strike gold. The tapas places that serve decent food are usually decent across board. This was in a little tapas place in Born, Barcelona.


And finally, this was a dish we had at El Cellar di San Roca, voted one of the best restaurants in the world by San Pellegrino. It was an interesting dish to experience. We were told that everything on this plate is edible. So from the white powder was some dehydrated prawn dust and hang on, let me get you the proper name from the menu. Ok here we go - A whole king prawn - chargrilled king prawn, king prawn sand, ink rocks, fried legs, head juice and king prawn essence. A little too molecularly gastronomic for my liking, but it was an experience.

The reason I decided to come up with this prawny post was because I wanted to make spaghetti marinara tonight and so bought a kilo of fresh prawns from the market. After shelling and heading them, I decided to make a concentrated prawn stock to add to my pasta tonight... Will let you know how that turns out...