Prawn Kalamaki with Tzatziki and Herb Salad

Kalamaki is simply Greek for "meat grilled on a skewer", in this case prawns. Peel and devein some green prawns and insert a skewer lengthwise through the prawn, this keeps it nice and straight while it is cooking. This recipe can be found on the masterchef website http://www.masterchef.com.au/prawn-kalamaki-with-tzatziki-and-herb-salad.htm 

On masterchef they cooked the prawns over a yakatori grill, which is basically a small BBQ, the wood and thyme sprigs would give the prawns a nice smoky flavour. I simply cooked mine in a frypan with some olive oil and thyme and they were still really nice. You could possibly smoke them over some wood chips in a wok.

To make the tzatziki you place some good quality Greek yoghurt in muslin and suspend it over a bowl in the fridge overnight to remove moisture and thicken the yoghurt. You then grate some cucumber and drain it well on a chux cloth placed over a rack in a baking dish. You combine the cucumber and yoghurt and add some grated garlic and eschalot, lemon rind, dill (which I wasn't able to buy so I added some fennel fronds for colour), honey, olive oil and cayenne pepper (I didn't have any so added a small amount of paprika). There was something about the flavour of the tzatziki that didn't fully appeal to me..maybe the fennel and paprika!!! My husband loved it and devoured the whole bowl so it was just a personal thing. It did work well with the prawns and a little lemon juice squeezed over the top.

The salad was meant to be a herb salad with fennel, sage, dill, Shiso (a member of the mint family), chives and tarragon. I used mixed baby spinach and rocket leaves, chives and fennel and really think any salad greens would work. The leaves were mixed with pepper and Kewpie mayonnaise which is a Japanese mayonnaise and has a slightly different flavour to our mayonnaise. I found it in our local Coles but it is also in Asian supermarkets. The salad was delicious.

Overall I would rate this dish an 8 out of 10.