Salted Egg Cereal Prawns
Got a day off today and I went to the supermarket and saw some really nice grey prawns. They were of reasonable size and I thought it would be perfect if I made Salted Egg Cereal Prawns.
My wife wanted me to make her favourite Garlic Tomato Prawns for dinner but I decided that I would try out something different and technically a little more demanding. I always like a little challenge in my cooking.
So I turned on my favourite techno house music and started preparing for dinner. I purposely kept the prawns cold in the fridge until it was time to cook because I saw on tv some tempura chef mentioned that the prawns need to be chilled just before deep frying them. Besides that, everything else is standard in my opinion.
Recipe
Ingredients
12 Grey Prawns (refrigerate the prawns until just before cooking)
1 packet of crispy Cereal (I bought the A1 brand at NTUC and it’s very convenient to use, you may also consider the classic Quaker Oatmeal if you like that.)
4 Salted Eggs
3 sprigs of Curry Leaves (in reality there is a lot of wastage, NTUC doesn’t sell 3 sprigs of curry leaves)
30 grams of Unsalted Butter
4 tbsp Corn Starch
2 Eggs (chicken eggs)
1 tsp Chicken Stock powder
A sprinkle of White Pepper powder
Olive Oil (for deep frying)
Method
1. Take the prawns out of the fridge and de-shell them leaving only the heads and tail (as the saying goes in hokkien, woo-tau-woo-buay lit. in mandarin 有头有尾). By now you would have cracked the two eggs into a bowl with the chicken stock and white pepper and given it a good mix.
2. In another plate, the corn starch is spread out and ready to go. Heat the oil in the wok and get it ready for deep frying. Using a pair of chopsticks, pick up the prawns dip in egg batter, then in corn starch coating and then into the hot oil.
3. You generally want to give the prawns a good fry of about 15 seconds. So you got to moderate an assembly line. 1st prawn goes in, then you prepare the next prawn, turn the prawn in the wok when you place the next prawn in and the third prawn is being dipped in batter.
4. Once the prawns have had 15 seconds of oil. Drop them into a strainer. Once all the prawns are cooked, turn off the fire and dip them into the hot oil all at once. Then strain them again.
5. Prepare the salted eggs (it would be good to cook them way before you even take the prawns out of the fridge). Salted Eggs are not cooked and are raw. So you got to factor that into your cooking time. Extract the yolks and you can use the whites for porridge.
6. In a clean wok, melt the butter. Be careful not to burn the butter. Add the salted egg yolks to cook. Using your frying paddle to mesh the yolks into the butter. This forms your sauce. Add the curry leaves at this point and the packet of crispy Cereal flakes. You can use whatever cereal flake you like, it doesn’t really matter.
7. Moderate the heat and stir quickly so that the butter doesn’t become clumpy. Immediately add the prawns into the wok and stir vigorously to coat the prawns with the cereal flakes.
8. Once prawns are all more or less coated with the cereal flakes. You may serve immediately.
Bon Appetit!
Certified shiok!