Prawn and zucchini skewers, done properly

I was down at the fish co-op on Wharf Road in Newcastle last Saturday, watching a bloke buy two kilos of green prawns and then ask the fishmonger how long to ‘boil them for the barbecue’. Mate. You don’t boil prawns for a barbecue. That’s the whole problem with a lot of seafood skewers I’ve eaten at other people’s places over the years, they’re either raw in the middle or rubber all the way through, and there’s no reason for either.

Prawn and zucchini skewers are one of those dishes everyone thinks they’ve mastered because they’ve thrown a few prawns on a stick before. Fair enough, it’s not hard. But there’s a right way and a lazy way, and the lazy way gives you dry prawns and zucchini that’s either raw and squeaky or collapsed into mush. Neither’s much of a Sunday lunch.

Why most prawn skewers go wrong

The main sin is overcrowding the skewer and undercooking the pan. People buy a nice hot barbecue plate, then don’t actually let it get hot before they start cooking, so the prawns steam instead of char. You want real colour on that shell, a bit of caramelisation where the marinade’s hit the heat. Get your pan properly hot, or your grill plate smoking before anything goes near it, and don’t muck about waiting for it to “warm up” while the prawns sit out on the bench getting warm and floppy.

The second sin is treating zucchini like it needs the same cooking time as the prawn. It doesn’t. Zucchini cut into decent thick rounds, about a centimetre and a half, holds its structure and gets a lovely bit of char on the cut faces while staying firm in the middle. Cut it too thin and it’s gone to mush by the time your prawns are done. I’ve said this before about greens in a hot wok over at the ginger tofu stir-fry, and it holds here too: high heat, short time, don’t fuss over it.

The marinade, kept honest

You don’t need twelve ingredients for a marinade. Garlic, lemon, olive oil, a bit of chilli if you like it, salt. That’s genuinely most of what you need. The prawns don’t need long in it either, twenty minutes is plenty, any longer and the acid starts doing something to the texture you don’t want, similar to how you’d treat raw fish for a ceviche (I go into that properly over in the kingfish ceviche with lime and chilli piece, if you want the acid-and-protein science of it).

Ingredients

Serves 4

• 800g green (raw) king prawns, peeled and deveined, tails on
• 2 medium zucchini, cut into 1.5cm rounds
• 3 cloves garlic, finely grated
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 60ml extra virgin olive oil, plus a little extra for brushing
• 1 long red chilli, finely chopped (optional)
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 small red onion, cut into wedges
• Small handful flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Lemon wedges, to serve
• 8 metal skewers, or wooden ones soaked in water for at least 30 minutes

Method

1. In a bowl, combine the garlic, lemon zest and juice, olive oil, chilli if using, paprika, a good pinch of salt and plenty of pepper. Add the prawns, toss to coat, and leave for 20 minutes at room temperature. No longer, no shortcuts here either way.
2. While the prawns marinate, get your barbecue chargrill plate or a heavy griddle pan on high heat. Give it a proper ten minutes to come up to full heat before anything touches it. This is not optional.
3. Thread the prawns, zucchini rounds and onion wedges onto the skewers, alternating as you go. Don’t cram them tight, they need a bit of breathing room to actually cook rather than steam against each other.
4. Brush the zucchini and onion lightly with extra olive oil and season with salt.
5. Lay the skewers on the hot plate. Cook for 2-3 minutes per side, turning once the prawns have gone pink and opaque and picked up some good colour, and the zucchini has char marks on the flat faces. Total cooking time is usually 6-8 minutes. Taste as you go if you’re unsure, cut one prawn open and check the middle isn’t translucent.
6. Rest for a minute off the heat, scatter with parsley, and serve with lemon wedges.

What to serve it with

I like these with something cold and sharp on the side, a shaved fennel salad does the job nicely (there’s a version over on the shaved fennel and orange salad page that works well against the char). A simple grain salad also earns its keep here if you want something more filling, think along the lines of the freekeh and roast vegetable combination we’ve run before. Either way, you want something with a bit of acidity to cut through the richness of the char and oil.

A variation worth trying

Swap the zucchini for chunks of pineapple in summer, the sweetness against the char is properly good, though I’ll admit that’s more of a backyard crowd-pleaser than something I’d put on a proper menu. If you want to lean more Asian in flavour, drop the paprika, add a splash of fish sauce and lime instead of lemon, and finish with coriander instead of parsley. It’s a different dish at that point, but it’s a good one, and it sits nicely alongside the lemongrass approach we use in the steamed snapper with lemongrass recipe.

Why prawns deserve a spot on the weekly rotation

Seafood twice a week is roughly what the Australian Dietary Guidelines suggest most of us should be aiming for, and prawns are one of the easier ways in if you’re not much of a fish cook. They’re lean, they cook fast, and they don’t sit heavy the way a big cut of red meat can on a warm evening. If you’re trying to get more variety into the week without turning dinner into a project, this is a decent place to start, and it fits well with the general approach we’ve talked about in how to build a more balanced plate without dieting.

I’ll admit prawns aren’t cheap right now, and if you’re watching the budget, a firm white fish like flathead does a similar job on a skewer for less coin, cut into decent chunks. See the garlic and herb baked flathead piece for how I treat that fish when it’s not on a stick. But if you can find good green prawns at a fair price, this is a genuinely quick Tuesday-night dinner that doesn’t taste like a quick Tuesday-night dinner, which is more than most shortcuts manage.

Get the pan hot, don’t overcrowd the skewer, and taste one before you pull the lot off the heat. That’s the whole recipe, really, everything else is detail.

— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen