Skull Island tiger prawns with fermented pumpkin, black garlic puree, espellette pepper, green shiso and pepitas

Recipe courtesy of Jacob Davey from FRDC's TV show Seafood Escape with Andrew Ettinghausen

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Cooking difficulty: Difficult

Serves:

Preparation: 5 days

Cooking: 1 hour

Pickling tips for molluscs

Mussels should be steamed and opened before pickling, and abalone, cuttlefish, squid and octopus should be tenderised and par-boiled before pickling.
Cook fish with the skin on

Skin on the finfish will provide a natural basting because most oil is stored in the skin.
Butter & olive oil works great with seafood

Butter, margarine or olive oil can be used to add moisture and flavour.
Tips for deep frying

Do not fry seafood with other foods, because the flavours will mix.
Cephalopods should be fried for a minimum time to ensure tenderness.
Do not salt seafood before frying as the salt can cause the oil to break down.
Lemon juice, vinegar or tartare sauce are the traditional accompaniments for deep-fried seafood as they help cut the richness of the oil.
Tips for glazing seafood

Once frozen, seafood can be removed from the "freezer", unwrapped, dipped under cold, running water, and then re-wrapped for freezing. This coats it with a glaze that helps reduce dehydration during its time in storage.

Ingredients

1 butternut pumpkin

Salt

2 tbsp pepitas ½ tsp espellette pepper

60g butter

300 ml shellfish stock (recipe below)

4 U/6 Skull Island prawns (peeled with heads removed)

100g peeled black garlic

10 ml sherry vinegar

20 ml water

10 ml olive oil

20 sprigs of baby green shiso

12 threads of prawn cracker

Shellfish stock

2kg prawn shells, no heads, frozen

80ml olive oil

50g butter 1 carrot

1 leek

1 onion

1 celery stick

1 clove garlic

1 bay leaf

4 sprigs thyme

60 ml brandy

60ml semi sweet sherry

200 ml white wine

6 tomatoes (pureed)

1l fish stock

Water to cover

Method

Fermented pumpkin

Peel and cut the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds.

Reserve the top half for pumpkin sheets.

Chop the bottom half into 8 equal slices place in a sous vide bag and weigh the pumpkin. Add 2 percent of salt to the sous vide bag. Seal the sous vide bag and leave at room temperature for 4 days.

Once fermented, slice the pumpkin in to 12 x 2 cm diamonds reserve the trim.

For the puree, blend 250 g of fermented pumpkin trim.

Place in a pot and reduce to 150 g, place back in blender and puree with 50 g butter.

For the pumpkin sheets, thinly slice pumpkin and cut into 8 cm x 8 cm squares. Season with salt and olive oil and freeze between plastic sheets for at least 12 hours.

Black garlic puree

Puree the garlic with 10 ml sherry vinegar, 20 ml water and 10 ml olive oil.

Season with salt.

Prawn cracker

Puree 100 g peeled prawns with 50 g tapioca flour.

Divide into 2 sous vide bags measuring 200 x 140 mm and vacuum on full.

Spread the mixture as evenly as possible and steam at 100 degrees for 10 minutes then cool in an ice bath. Remove for the sous vide bags, slice as thinly as possible and place in dehydrator for 2-3 hours.

Deep fry at 180 degrees for 5-10 seconds.

Shellfish jus

Reduce shellfish stock to 40 ml, cook 10g butter to light beurre noisette and add to shellfish stock.

Shellfish stock

Gently sweat the mirepoix in the butter in a separate pan until just softened. Set aside.

Spread the shells in one even layer in the trays and roast in the in oven for 10-12 minutes at 180˚C. Stir occasionally to get even colour, taking to a light roasted colour, too dark will make the sauce bitter and the shells will take on a little colour in the pot.

Have the pot ready on the heat and add the olive oil. When the shells are golden, transfer to the pot and colour some more in the hot oil. Do not burn!

Deglaze the trays with a little white wine and add back to the wine.

When the shells are nicely coloured and have a good aroma, add the softened mirepoix, brandy and sherry and reduce by two thirds.

Then add the wine and bouquet garni and reduce by half.

Stir every now and then to ensure the shells don’t catch.

Add the fish stock and the tomato puree and mix all together.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 30-45 minutes.

Do not skim off the oil as it holds a lot of flavour and colour.

Take off heat and then strain, pushing a little on the shells to extract the sauce. Cool.

Pepitas

In a small pot cover the pepitas with sunflower oil.

Place on a medium heat, occasionally stirring.

Once the pepitas begin to fry and pop, strain them out and immediately season with salt and espellette.

To serve

Begin by cooking your prawns on a hot chargrill (preferably charcoal). They will take about 1 minute each side, remove and divide each prawn into 4 pieces, then dress in a small amount of shellfish jus.

Defrost the pumpkin sheets and carefully place in the centre of a hot serving plate.

Place some pepitas on top of the pumpkin. Using piping bags, arrange dots of both the pumpkin and black garlic purees over the pumpkin slices.

Place the prawns and continue with the pumpkin diamonds and green shiso.

Finish with 1 tsp of shellfish jus and a few prawn crackers.

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Skull Island tiger prawns with fermented pumpkin, black garlic puree, espellette pepper, green shiso and pepitas

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Skull Island tiger prawns with fermented pumpkin, black garlic puree, espellette pepper, green shiso and pepitas

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