Marinated Prawns with Creamy Harissa Sauce

It’s that time of the month again…Recipe Redux time that is!!  On the 21st of every month now I will come up with an amazing recipe (hopefully) for the challenge set before me…

This month’s challenge:

The New Year is heating up with smoke and spiciness. From boldly flavored smoked salts to actual smoking techniques, subtly smoked food is on-trend. The same can be said for spice as we savor heat from harissa, sriracha and smoked paprika. Show us the healthy dish you’re heating up with smoke and/or spiciness.

What a great challenge and I had a lot of fun thinking of all the lovely things I could make, but then had to narrow it down to one, which was hard.  I decided to make a recipe using harissa paste – and what a great choice.  This recipe comes from my very old and very loved Womens Weekly Hot and Spicy Cookbook (it is also available online here).  As the recipe is already healthy, I really didn’t need to make any changes.  But I did make a few very minor alterations

I am familiar with harissa, a lovely paste made from chilli, garlic and spices, and sort of used it in my Harissa Chicken with Chickpea Cous Cous last year…

When I say sort of used it, I actually cheated that time and just put the Harissa ingredients in, I didn’t actually make the paste.  This time I did make the paste and this is the recipe I used…

My quick harissa sauce recipe (adapted from taste.com.au)

• 2-3 long fresh red chillies
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

• Finely chop chillies and garlic
• Toast cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over medium-low heat for 5-6 minutes until very fragrant
• Add toasted seeds to a mortar and pestle and grind into a powder
• Add the chopped chillies, garlic and salt and grind into a smooth paste
• Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil and grind into the paste before adding the rest of the oil
• Set aside until needed

I am not great with chilli-hot food so I erred on the side of caution and only used 2 chillies.  They were the lovely big long ones which are actually very mild, so you can taste the other flavours in the paste and the paste is really lovely.  I have some left that I am looking forward to experimenting with!

The harissa is used in a lovely ‘creamy’ sauce along with mango chutney (I used my homemade mango chutney, but I highly recommend Sharwoods Green Label mango chutney) to go with these marinated prawns.  The sauce is made using yoghurt and I have to admit I did not use the low fat variety as the regular yoghurt is much creamier, yet very low in fat (8%) when compared to cream (35-45%).  The sauce is really delicious and would also go well with chicken or white fish

I served the prawns on a bed of chickpea quinoa – made in the same style as the chickpea cous cous I made with Harissa chicken.  I had some quinoa left over from the weekend, so I used that in place of the cous cous, and the chickpeas I had were the dark brown ones (called desi or tyson).  Other than that the recipe is just the same…

And I cooked broccoli and garlicky sauteed kale to go along with it – a perfectly balanced meal! (Just a shame about the quality of photos!!)

Per Serve:  3-4 Large Prawns (approx 160g) with about 2 tablespoons of creamy harissa sauce

1178 kJ or 280 calories; P 25g Fat 17g SFat 3g CHO 4g Fibre 2g