Dinner Sunday 21 January - Marinated Prawns Wrapped in Pandan with Mixed Vegetable Stir Fry

Marinated Prawns Wrapped in Pandan with Mixed Vegetable Stir Fry
120g raw tiger prawns
3 cloves garlic
1 thumb of ginger, peeled & grated
2-3 chillis, sliced
1 tablespoon Indonesian sweet soy sauce (ketjap manis)
1 tablespoon soy sauce

10 pandan leaves

50g baby corn, cut into bite sized pieces
50g mange tout, cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 can (about 100g) straw mushrooms, halved

1 tablespoon cornflour
small handful coriander leaves
3-4 spring onions, sliced
50g (dry weight) jasmine rice, cooked

Mix together the garlic, chilli, ginger, sweet soy and regular soy. Add the prawns and allow to marinate at least one hour or up to overnight.

Drain the prawns and reserve the marinade. Wrap each prawn in a piece of pandan leaf and secure with a toothpick. Place the pandan "packets" in a bowl and place the bowl in a steamer. Steam the prawn packets for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, spray a non-stick wok with a little sunflower oil and add the baby corn, mange tout and straw mushrooms. Stir fry for a couple of minutes, then add the reserved marinade to the stir fry.

Remove the prawns from the steamer. There should be some liquor collected in the bowl, so add this to the stir fry as well, along with the cornflour mixed with a little cold water.

Cook the veggies for a further minute or tow, until the sauce is thickened. Toss in the spring onions and coriander.

Mound the rice on a plate and serve with the pandan wrapped prawns and stir fried veggies in sauce. Remove & discard the pandan leaves before eating the prawns.

I made this because one of the stalls I frequent in Chapel Market had pandan leaves. You don't see them very often in London (at least, I don't) so when I do see them, I buy them. I first ran across them in Indonesia. These days, whenever i see them, I buy them and makes something!

I like sweet aduki beans cooked with pandan - yum!

Pandan, also known as screw pine, has a most amazing fragrance which it imparts to foods cooked with it. It is widely used in southeast Asia in both sweet and savoury dishes.

It is delicious!

Here is a picture of the prawn parcels after steaming


The Wikipedia says:
"Pandanus amaryllifolius is a tropical plant in the screwpine genus which is known commonly as pandan and used widely in South East Asian cooking. It is an erect green plant with fan-shaped sprays of long, narrow, bladelike leaves and woody aerial roots.

The plant is rare in the wild but cultivated widely for use as a flavoring in cooking. The leaves are used fresh or wilted. They have a nutty, botanical fragrance which enhances the flavor of Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian foods, especially rice dishes. The leaves are sometimes steeped in coconut milk, which is then added to the dish. They may be tied in a bunch and cooked with the food. They also may be woven into a basket which is used as a pot for cooking rice. Pandan chicken, or gai ob bai toey, is a Thai dish with chicken wrapped in pandan leaves and fried. The leaves are also used as a flavoring for desserts such as pandan cake and sweet beverages.

The plant is sterile, flowers only very rarely, and is propagated by cuttings."