Recipe by Jodie Smith

Rose Harissa Butter Prawns on the Barbecue

Name: Rose Harissa Butter Prawns on the Barbecue
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 6 min
Total time: 26 min
Yield: 4

Serves4 people

Prep20 min

Cook6 min

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Shop the pantry

Ottolenghi Rose, Pomegranate and Preserved Lemon Harissa (170g)

$15.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

Rose harissa butter prawns are large green prawns split down the back through the shell, packed with butter beaten through with Ottolenghi rose, pomegranate and preserved lemon harissa, then grilled shell side down so the butter melts into the split instead of into the coals. Serves 4. Prep 20 minutes once the butter has had an hour out of the fridge, cook 6, and the shells do most of the work.

The shell is the pan

Nearly everything that goes wrong with barbecued prawns happens in the gap between the food and the fire. A marinade brushed onto a peeled prawn has nowhere to sit: it slides straight down the curve of the meat and is gone in the first minute, seasoning the smoke rather than dinner. A paste carrying fruit and citrus, and this one names both on the label, catches faster still. Butter is the worst of the three, because milk solids scorch at barbecue temperature and take whatever is mixed into them along for the ride.

Leave the shell on and split it, and none of that arises. A butterflied prawn opens into a shallow boat with its own shell underneath. The butter goes into that channel, stays there, melts slowly and bastes the meat from below for the whole cook without ever touching hot metal. The shell chars, which is exactly what you want it doing, and the flesh above it cooks gently in seasoned fat. There is one turn, 45 seconds at the very end, and it is only for colour.

Soft butter, never melted

Harissa is an oily paste and butter is an emulsion, so the order you bring them together decides whether the mixture holds. Beaten into butter that is soft but still opaque, the paste disperses into the fat and the whole thing stays thick enough to sit in the split of a prawn until it reaches the grill. Stirred into butter you have melted first, it separates inside a few minutes: red oil on top, wet sediment underneath, and nothing that will stay where you put it. Take the butter out of the fridge an hour before you start and this recipe has no other awkward step.

Make double the butter

Two tablespoons of the rose, pomegranate and preserved lemon harissa season the 150g of butter that covers a kilo of prawns, so a 170g jar at $15.95 gives up about a fifth of itself to dinner. Make twice as much while the bowl is out. Rolled and frozen, harissa butter turns corn, lamb cutlets, roast pumpkin and a split jacket potato into dinners you did not have to plan. The jar itself goes back in the fridge once opened, and a dry spoon every time keeps the surface clean. It has work beyond butter too: our barbecued whole snapper names this jar as the hotter stand-in for preserved lemon marinade, rubbed straight into the scores of the fish, and it goes sticky over sausages and onions in pomegranate and lemon harissa sticky sausages, which is the 20 minute weeknight version of the same jar.

Rose harissa is one style among several, and the differences matter before you swap one jar for another. Our guide to what harissa paste is and how the styles differ lays them out. Rose harissa in particular is a style name rather than one product, so read the label: this recipe means the Ottolenghi jar, which names pomegranate and preserved lemon alongside the rose, while Belazu Rose Harissa is a different paste sold under the same two words, and 10 ways to use Belazu rose harissa is the piece for that one. For the same method with green heat and no fruit sitting behind it, Ottolenghi green harissa goes in tablespoon for tablespoon, and both sit with the rest of the Ottolenghi range and our gourmet condiments.

Ingredients

A kilo of prawns is a main for four with bread and something green, and it stretches to six when it is one platter among several. Prep 20 minutes, cook 6. Four things on this list are pantry items, and those four are the ones we sell. The rest is a morning errand: prawns from the fish counter, plus butter, lemons and a bunch of herbs.

Ingredients

For the rose harissa butter
150g	unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2 tbsp	Ottolenghi Rose, Pomegranate and Preserved Lemon Harissa
1	small garlic clove, crushed to a paste with a pinch of salt
1	lemon, finely grated zest only
1/2 tsp	sea salt flakes
2 tbsp	flat-leaf parsley or coriander, finely chopped
For the prawns
1kg	large green prawns, shell on, about 16 to 20 of them
1 tbsp	Kangaroo Island extra virgin olive oil, for the shells
	black pepper
To finish
1	lemon, cut into wedges
1 tbsp	Belazu preserved lemon, skin only, rinsed and finely chopped, optional
1 handful	mint or flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 packet	VPC Artisan Pita Olive Oil & Sea Salt, or warm flatbread, for the butter left in the tray

Splitting a prawn without halving it

Green means raw, and raw is the only option here, because a cooked prawn has already had its four minutes and the time it takes to melt butter in a shell is time spent turning it to rubber. Size decides whether the method works at all. Ask for large green prawns at 16 to 20 to the kilo, which is the size that leaves a split wide enough to hold a rounded teaspoon. Below that the cut closes over the butter and the meat is through before the butter has melted, so the knife work buys you nothing. Heads on or off changes neither the timing nor the technique, though heads on look better on a platter and give people something to hold.

The cut is one pass with a small sharp knife, from behind the head to the base of the tail, straight down the back and through the shell. The shell gives way first, and once you are through it you want to stop about two thirds of the way into the meat. That last third is the hinge. Cut it and you have two halves that curl apart over the heat and drop their butter through the bars. Leave it and the prawn opens like a book and holds everything you put in it. Wipe the blade between prawns, because the dark vein comes out on the tip of the knife and goes straight back in if you do not.

Frozen green prawns beat the ones thawed loose on ice at most counters, for the simple reason that you control the defrost: overnight in the fridge, then patted dry with paper towel until the shells stop shining. Water is what ruins the first minute on the grill. Come December, when the fish counter turns into an event of its own, ordering and keeping Christmas prawns deals with everything between the shop and the barbecue.

How far ahead you can butter them

The butter is the part that wants time. Rolled in baking paper it holds three days in the fridge and three months in the freezer, and it is better on day two, once the salt and the paste have worked through each other. The prawns are the part that does not. Split, deveined and buttered, they will sit covered on a tray in the fridge for four hours and no longer, because past that the salt in the butter begins to firm the flesh along the cut edges, and that is a texture you cannot undo.

Method

Take the butter out of the fridge an hour before you start. It should dent under a finger and still look opaque, not glossy.
Beat the butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon until pale and creamy, about a minute.
Beat in the harissa a tablespoon at a time, working the first right through before the second goes in. The butter turns brick red and should look even, with no oil on top.
Beat in the crushed garlic, the lemon zest and the salt, then fold the chopped herbs through.
Scrape a third of the butter into a shallow serving tray big enough for every prawn in one layer and leave it at room temperature. That third is the sauce.
Lay a prawn on its side and cut down the back through the shell, from behind the head to the base of the tail, stopping two thirds of the way through the meat so it stays joined underneath.
Lift the dark vein out with the tip of the knife, wipe the blade, and repeat with the rest.
Spoon a rounded teaspoon of the remaining butter into each split and push it down the length of the cut.
Sit the prawns shell down on a tray and keep them cold while the barbecue heats.
Light the barbecue, drop the lid and bring it to a medium high of around 220°C on the hood gauge. Ten minutes at that reading puts heat into the bars, not just the air.
Scrape the bars clean, brush the shells with the olive oil so they do not grip, and grind black pepper over the open prawns.
Lay the prawns shell side down, cut side up, and close the lid. Do not move them. Give them 4 to 5 minutes.
Read the split. The butter should be bubbling and the flesh turning opaque, working upwards from the shell.
Turn them cut side down for 45 seconds, for colour and nothing else, then lift them off.
Pile them into the tray of reserved butter and turn them through it. The heat off the shells melts it into a sauce in the base of the tray.
Finish at the table: mint and chopped preserved lemon over the top, a squeeze of lemon across the whole tray, pita crisps and the last wedges alongside.

Common questions

Do you leave the shell on when you barbecue prawns?

Here the shell is the whole point: it holds the butter in the split, keeps the paste and the milk solids off the bars, and shields the meat from direct heat. Guests peel their own at the table, so put out napkins.

How do you know when a butterflied prawn is done?

Not by the curl. A prawn split down the back cannot draw itself up the way a whole one does, so the shape test most prawn recipes use tells you little here. Read the cut face. The flesh goes from grey and translucent to white and opaque, travelling upwards from the shell, so it is ready when the last grey line along the top of the split turns white. The butter is the second reading: it bubbles hard while water is still leaving the meat and quietens as the flesh sets.

What if the butter runs out of the split?

The prawn is not sitting level. One with the head still on is heavier at one end and tips if the bars run the same way it does, so lay them across the bars and rest each tail against its neighbour. A nick in the underside of the shell leaks too, which is why the cut goes down the back and never the belly. If the bars keep beating you, move indoors: the prawns sit flat on an oven tray under an overhead grill turned to full, on the highest shelf the tray will take, and are done in 5 to 6 minutes with no turn. You give up the char on the shells and get back every drop of butter, caught in the tray instead of dripping into the fire.

Is rose harissa hot?

Less so than the word harissa suggests, because the rose and the fruit in the jar sit alongside the chilli rather than behind it. Two tablespoons through 150g of butter, across a kilo of prawns, lands as warmth and perfume more than heat. For something sharper, add a third tablespoon to the butter rather than spooning raw paste over the cooked prawns.

A 170g jar of the rose, pomegranate and preserved lemon harissa costs $15.95. Order it with anything else from the Ottolenghi range and it all comes in one box. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. If it is a gift, the Ottolenghi hampers box it up, and the table around it is in festive entertaining essentials.