grilled prawns and rocket salad

serves 4

What You Need

400g of tiger prawns
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
100g of rocket, washed and with any heavy stems removed
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
The juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
Maldon sea salt and coarsely-ground red or black peppercorns

Here’s How

Peel the prawns and run a knife down their backs to pull away any small black threads. Rinse and pat dry. Heat the pan or grill, coating with a little olive oil. Cook the prawns quickly at a high temperature for about 3 minutes until they start to go golden. While they’re cooking, sprinkle them with the garlic, lemon zest, Maldon sea salt and coarsely-ground pepper.

Line a flat salad bowl with the rocket. The moment the prawns are done, remove from the heat. Add a garlicky-vinaigrette dressing to the rocket, place the prawns on top, sprinkle with lemon juice and coarsely-ground black or red peppercorns and serve immediately.

There is some magic about grilled prawns and rocket mixed together – I’ve no idea why. I’ve tried to figure it out more than once. All I know is that the richness of prawns and the crunchiness of rocket – especially if you can get wild rocket – is worth any amount of effort to get together. The lovely thing about this salad is that it’s no effort at all to make. You can grill your prawns ahead of time and simply take them out of the fridge and add to the rocket, or you can grill them, as I tend to do, on a tepenyaki grill and serve them immediately on top of the rocket.