Dirty Prawns, Spring Onions and Bacon with Cheesy Polenta

 Dirty Prawns, Spring Onions and Bacon with Cheesy Polenta


Why this one?
In the book, this dish is one of the few which has a picture gracing 2 full pages - the picture looks beautiful. The kind of the food you can practically taste just by looking at the picture. Basically I made it because the picture in the book looked so damn good. 

I had also asked the fish man at the market the previous week if he could get king prawns. I am conscious about the provenance of prawns since doing an environmental qualification and watching a video of the brutal conditions of prawn farm workers in Thailand, so getting them locally eased some of my qualms. Stowmarket's fish man obliged making it, finally, the week of the dirty prawns - still not entirely sure why they're dirty?


Find the recipe here...https://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/g/gizzi-erskine-s-dirytyprawnsspringonionsbacon.html

Cheesy polenta - https://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/recipes/recipe_directory/g/gizzi-erskine-s-cheesypolenta.html

Any substitutes?
I am going to take this as a massive win as the only ingredient I didn't have was white pepper - I had everything else and I used everything. Check me out!

The actual cooking of the dish
Another shortish cooking time for this plate of food. The prawn part only took 15 minutes to cook, however the polenta occupied at least an hour of my life, for which I was standing in front the hob whisking the bloody stuff for a good hour. During this time I managed to google the origins of polenta and learnt that its often cooked with milk. I was also schooled that the first 15 minutes are vital when cooking it (wish I'd known this before  I started because, as always it seems, it was bath time* so I kept rushing up and down the stairs to stir the polenta/get my baby ready for bed. Polenta and bath time don't really mix. 

*She was never left unattended in the bath just FYI!

One slight issue I came across was when trying to butterfly the prawns, as the ones I got didn't have their tails still on so it didn't really work. However that didn't seem to matter in the cooking of them, perhaps it was just for aesthetics as they do look so tempting when they have been butterflied. 

So during the painfully long polenta cooking process, I kept trying the poltena. Testing to see if there was 'no bite' to the grain. I am still not entirely sure what that means, as I am sure there was still a bit of a bite when I finally decided it was done. During these tastings, I have to say, I thought the polenta tasted rank. I was worried that it would ruin the prawns, it just tasted of stock and was grainy. But I continued, hoping that the addition of cheese and butter would have its usual enhancing effect. 

The prawns, bacon and spring onions were basically just fried really hot and really fast.

Where I ate it 
Still not answering that question. But I did have some delicious wine so you know!

What I thought

I have to say, I wasn't looking forward to the dish, the polenta did not look like the enticing double page spread in the book, the prawns weren't butterflied and I still had the gravelly, over salty memory of the polenta during the cooking process. Never the less I dolloped a very small amount onto the plate and topped with the prawn mixture. Once everything was on the plate I decided that the dish did look quite like the picture in the book.

First taste and my husband said this was his favourite of all the dishes cooked so far from SLOW. For me the first taste transported me back to a holiday in Barcelona sitting at a tiny kitchen stall in the gloriously colourful, loud and busting central food market. Here I ate the most wonderful garlic prawns cooked hot and fast in olive oil soaking up the mouth tingling sauce with bread and a glass of fizz. The prawns in this dish had that same vibe but the addition of the rich, silky poletna (yes I had aced polenta!) created a meal rather than just a snack.

Difficulty: Easy but pretty time consuming. 

Tastiness rating: 9/10


Next time I'd....make less polenta, we ended up throwing some away. I would also add a little bit more bacon and perhaps a veg. I think courgettes, peppers or maybe aubergine would work really well with this. You could definitely cook the veg the same way as the prawns.