May 27th - Spot Prawn Feast at S and G's - First of the Season, Yay!

RAW BC Spot Prawn

I cannot believe we missed the kick off of the Spot Prawn season.  It is quite a thing here.  The local Spot Prawns are amazing, sweet and huge.  You can buy them directly from the Prawn Boats that come in daily.  They announce their arrival with a toot and people, like me are usually waiting. You can also by them in the Granville Market and we realised last year that they are about the same price for the Live Prawns.

S and G our friends from Montreal, invited us for a post vacation catch up.  S bought a heap of Spot Prawns at the Market that day. What a treat!  After S let us into the underground parking and we got upstairs, we found jittery G nervous about the still moving prawn.  A few particularly feisty ones were determined to pull a 'finding Nemo'. G and I jumped everytime they did. They cooked our dinner a la minute per course and it could not have been fresher.

We started with a nice fresh salad of Poached Spot Prawns on a bed of finely sliced Fennel, Basil, Greens and Grapfruit.  They dunked the live Prawn into the boiling water for all of 3-5 minutes.  I am not sure if they used a broth.  Knowing S, I can only assume it was and it was homemade.  We debated for a minute while they cooled as to whether or not we should serve the salads with or without the heads.  Normally, there is alot of goodness in the head similar to Crawfish.  S and G decided it would be neater for at least the salad course to remove the heads but not the shells.  The freshly cooked Prawns in shell lent a nice seafood broth as a sort of dressing. As well the heat of the Prawn slightly wilted the Fennel.  It was wonderful I really liked the thinly sliced Fennel so thin you can read a letter through it.  D won't like this but he likes to cook his Fennel thicker but I'm not sure if its because he likes the Fennel thicker or because he hates my Mandolin (Slicer). There's an edge you eliminate when you slice it that thin. MMMM

They paired their started and catching up with an Oyster Bay Chardonnay 2008.  Nice light, not too much 'wood' :^P

The main was more Fresh Live Spot Prawn lightly stir fried in some Butter and Garlic with a Steamed Coconut Dipping Sauce.  They were served with some lightly steamed Broccolini, Shredded Carrot and Rice perfumed with Kaffir Lime Leaves.  I am going to buy Kaffir Lime Leaves at my earliest opportunity.  I could smell that subtle sumthin sumthing when we walked in but I could not put my finger on it.  I have always thought there was something nutty and complimentary about Limes in Thai cooking but have never used Kaffir Lime leaves at home.  It gave the rice that wonderfully aromatic quality you smell and taste in restaurants. Yummo!  S heated his Coconut Milk dipping sauce with his Cappucino steamer. How clever!  It gave it a nice little froth.    A wonderful meal which they paired with a Chablis Dampt et Fils. It had a light, quirky personality, slight minerality.  Nice.

Just when we thought it could not get better for a 'school' night dinner party, there was dessert! G made a toasty, crunch fresh Apricot Crumble.  The tang of the fresh Apricot with the sweet crumble topping was great.  They treated us to a drop of S's Poire William. The famous Pear liquor is world renown for it's captive whole Pear in the bottle.  The bottles are placed around the buds on the trees.  I only found out last year from S that you can buy 'refill' liquor to continue to 'juice' the Pear.  Wonderful.

What was the best was that S and G know about my blog.  That meant that not only did they not mind that I was going to document our dinner and take photos but that S even let me use his top shelf macro lens to take a shot of the Spot Prawn. :^D

Cheers!