Food You Can Eat: Garlic Prawns

Since I was a little kid my parents loved a Szechuan Chinese restaurant called the Mandarin in Honolulu.  This restaurant started in Chinatown but moved a few times over the years to different locations until finally the owners retired.  Over all those years my family would have most of our big family dinners at this restaurant.  The owners would laugh because we almost always ordered the exact same things that we would all share.  We all had our favorites but mine was always garlic prawns.  When the owner told us he was closing the restaurant we were all heart broken.  He told us he would come cook for us at home anytime but knew we would never ask him to do that.  I even offered to fund him to make a cookbook but he wasn’t really into that.  He did however give us his “recipes” for our favorites.  Well, his version of “recipe” is the ingredients he uses with no quantities at all.  Over the years I have messed with the ingredients over and over until I am finally getting a pretty good version but much like this chef, I do not measure quantities.  This recipe will give you something to work with but you will need to figure out how much of each to put in on your own and according to your tastes. 

This is the exact recipe he gave us:

GARLIC PRAWNS

Cornstarch

Egg

Flour

Chili Pepper

Green Onion

Carrots

Shoyu

Vinegar

Sugar

Water

Oil

Coat prawns with mixture of cornstarch, egg and flour.  Deep fry and set aside.   Cut chili pepper, garlic, green onion and carrots   Mix together shoyu, vinegar, sugar and water   Cook chili pepper mixture with shoyu mixture…add prawns last and flash fry altogether.

First off, if you don’t know, shoyu is the Japanese word for soy sauce (I used Aloha low salt version).  Although he only used cornstarch, I used half cornstarch and half potato starch (it makes it a little crispier in my opinion but not at all necessary).  I’m not 100% sure what chili peppers he used but I’m pretty sure they were the small Thai chili peppers and that is the only thing I used.  Here you can buy them in any Asian grocery store and I freeze them.  My wife and youngest daughter don’t like hot peppers so I get in trouble if I use more than 3 or 4.  For the prawns/shrimp, I usually use the 2lb bag of 20 count shrimp from Costco.  So yes, technically my version is garlic shrimp but whatever! 

I try to get a pancake type consistency with my mixture of cornstarch, egg and flour.  It takes at least 2 eggs and I go heavier on flour then almost equal parts cornstarch/potato starch until it is pretty thick.  Mix in the peeled/de-veined shrimp/prawns.

I use Canola oil to fry but you can use any clean oil that is good for deep frying. The oil needs to be hot and the shrimp will want to stick together.  It’s best if you can keep them apart but they are easy enough to separate after if they stick together.  You want them to turn golden on each side.  (I don’t truly deep fry so I have to flip once they get golden on one side).  I do this in batches and set them aside on paper towels to dry.  

Next, I take just a little of the shrimp oil (you can use fresh oil but I am cheap!) and cook the garlic, chili, carrots, and green onions. (remove stems and chop the peppers too…I did that after I took the below picture)

Cook until the garlic becomes fragrant and don’t over cook it.  Then pour in the shoyu, vinegar, sugar and water mixture.  Note: his recipe calls for water but I don’t use water unless I mix in too much vinegar and I need to cut the acidity.  I usually use and almost equal shoyu/vinegar ratio, about 2 tablespoons of  white sugar and if I use water, a tablespoon or so.  Continue to cook this until sauce boils and lower heat.  You can mix in a little cornstarch here if you want a thicker sauce.

Kill the heat and mix fried shrimp back in and serve immediately.  Surprisingly, these are delicious even the next day cold or reheated.  They should be tangy and super flavorful without any other spices. Sometimes I serve this with stir fried bok choy or eggplant but sometimes with just rice and kim chee. The owners of that restaurant were actually Chinese that grew up in Korea (or vice versa) but in any case it influenced how they cooked and some of the side dishes.

Enjoy!