Exmoor Lockdown Diary 122 - Prawning

My friend and colleague Richard Austin took this photo of me many years ago when I still looked comparatively young, although what had happened to my hair on that particular day god only knows. Anyway, the point of this article is to talk about prawns and prawning…

There’s a Van Morrison song which ends with a simple observation borne of absolute contentment. “Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time,” mutters the old Irish crooner in a strange lilting and poetic little number called Coney Island.

“Stop off at Ardglass for a couple of jars of mussels and some potted herrings in case we get famished before dinner…” says Van Morrison as he speaks the words in his gravelly Irish brogue rather than sings them…

Devon chef and forage David Beazley hutning for prawns

Not many rock stars intone the delights of preserved seafood in their work. But I have been to Ardglass on Northern Ireland’s east coast and eaten mussels and potted herrings - and then gone on to be lonely but satisfied and nourished on tiny uninhabited Coney Island - so I know just how good such a journey can be…

And I would repeat his observation: why can’t life be like this all the time? 

That is certainly what I was thinking on a Devon beach last week as I finished a wild foraged prawn cocktail in the sunshine and reflected that it was probably one of the nicest things I’ve eaten this year. Perhaps ever. 

And the prawns in question were not preserved, frozen, bottled or jarred. They were very fresh indeed, having been caught by myself and by my chef-lecturer pal, David Beazley, just minutes before.

Lovely, juicy, sweet prawns. The most pinky-orange and flavoursome prawns I have tasted a long time. 

And at this point I’d like to reflect on the extremely satisfying activity of catching your own food, then cooking it right there and then on a beach. We did it the other day in these pages when we hooked a few mackerel off Lyme Regis - but perhaps I liked this prawning thing even more, because it reminded me of my West Country childhood when we regularly netted these lively crustacea and cooked them for lunch.

Okay, so it’s hard work and you‘re going to get wet and maybe cold - and all for a little bag of prawns that you could buy in a supermarket for a couple of quid. Which is immediately untrue because no shop-bought prawn in the world will taste anywhere nearly as good as a fresh one taken from West Country waters… But my point is as much about mental satisfaction as it is about flavour. 

As kids, those prawn sandwiches we’d make after we’d nicked a pan and a camping stove off mum would be the very finest things on our summer menu - even if they did only consist of white bread, butter, salt and loads of white pepper. 

But the thing about growing up and getting wiser and more experienced as a cook - and befriending someone like the talented Mr Beazley - is that you can do so, so much more with foraged ingredients like the humble hand-caught prawn. 

“I just know those leaves will work really well - especially that sorrel,” said David as he put together our prawn cocktail. “Although I am a forager, I am a chef as well - so I know what to pick then I use my cheffy skills to perhaps do something more adventurous with it.”

We’ve met David before in these pages - he is a chef-lecturer at Exeter College and he was telling me the other day that he does indeed take his students out on foraging trips. “So many chefs do not know where their food comes from. They pick up a phone and the ingredients are with them next morning. Apart from anything else, going out to where the food comes from can help give you ideas.”

Like David’s concept of picking wild leaves growing up on the sea-cliffs above the cove to make an altogether different, more interesting style of prawn cocktail… 

“I’ve picked some yarrow because it’s quite structural and looks nice - and its got a mild flavour - some people says its slightly medicinal but I’d disagree with that. It’s quite mild, not grassy - like spinach,” he told me. “I put some sea-beet in, which is actually quite salty - then I put some sorrel leaves in which are quite citrus - so you’ve got that natural lemony cooking-apple taste. 

“I’ve put those mixed leaves in the bottom of the bowl just like you would with an iceberg (lettuce) and then I’ve put the peeled prawns on top of that and put some dressing on top of the prawns. A little flick of hot paprika on top - very traditional.”

Well, traditional - but with a distinct foraging take. And that is my point. If you know what you are doing you can combine the things you pick or catch and make them into something called a dish. And David prepared another assembly with our fresh caught shellfish, which was a Japanese inspired prawn cocktail that looked a perfect cheffy picture on the plate on a sandy South Devon beach. 

It combined a scarlet lick of foraged home-made elderberry conserve with the greens of sea-lettuce and laver seaweeds, both of which David had picked and dried. There was also a white radish, or mooli, he’d picked from his garden. This was finished off by a few spots of bright green shop-bought wasabi paste.

Apart from the last two ingredients, the dish really was the cove on a plate. There were elderberries growing up on the cliffs and both seaweeds were abundant down at the low tide mark which is where we’d caught the prawns using a sturdy landing-net David had bought at an angling shop.

I won’t give away all David’s secrets - but basically you shove the net along the side of reefs at low tide. Where the rocks meet the sand there tends to be an overhang which is draped in a forest of seaweed - and this is where the spawns hang out to graze, or whatever it is prawns do.

The prawners along my own native Bristol Channel coast do exactly the same thing at Watchet - with one big difference… There you cannot see what you are doing in the mud and silted coffee-coloured water, so you are forced to work blind. The resulting hard-labour can be frustrating and punctuated by trips and falls. 

Along the South Devon coast the water is clear and you tend to wade across firm areas of sandy sea-bed. The live prawns on both coasts are brown in colour (the Bristol Channel examples tend to be larger, probably thanks to all the nutrient rich silt) - and both turn orangey-pink the moment you throw them into salted boiling water. But the south coast prawns definitely turn a prettier, brighter orange-pink than their Bristol Channel cousins.

In these days when environmental concerns about over-fishing etc must, quite rightly, rule the roost - do I think the odd half-hour prawn-hunt does much harm? Perhaps it would, if the entire nation went out and did it. But all the hard work required for a child’s seaside-bucket worth of prawns means it’s never going to become a popular pastime - and I cannot believe one bloke with an 18-inch-wide net can do any damage at all in a chilly 30 minutes.  

So is all the fuss worth it? Probably not for a lot of folk. But for me it’s the best thing I’ve done all summer. Indeed, I really do ask myself - wouldn’t it be great, indeed, if life was like this all the time…

David Beazeley’s two foraged prawn cocktails and an easy-to-make bisque

Peeled prawns

Baby sea beet leaves

Sorrel

Yarrow

Cocktail sauce

100g mayonnaise

25g tomato ketchup

Squeeze of lemon juice

Pinch of paprika to finish

Simply build the prawn cocktail as you would using garden lettuce, but use the foraged leaves instead.

Not quite David’s Japanese prawn cocktail but one I enjoyed in the South China Seas

Japanese style prawn cocktail

Dried sea lettuce

Dried laver seaweed

Shell on cooked prawns

Wasabi paste

Thin strips of radish

Elderberry puree

Elderberry puree

100 g elderberries

10g sugar

Place in a small sauce pan, cover and simmer for 5 minutes

Rub through a fine sieve, add a pinch of salt

Arrange all the ingredients on a plate in the most imaginative and attractive way you can - and admire your handiwork while knowing such a dish in a London restaurant would cost you more than 30 quid.

Prawn bisque (using the shells/heads from peeling the prawns)

500g shells

100g roughly chopped onion 

100g roughly chopped carrot

50g roughly chopped leek/celery

15g tomato puree

50mls brandy

40g butter

40g flour

1 litre water

50 mls double cream

Salt

Pepper 

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the chopped vegetables and cook gently for a few minutes without colouring them.

Add in the brandy, broken up shells, tomato puree and the flour and stir well.

Add the water and bring gently to the boil, cover and simmer for 1 hour

Pour through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan, the resulting liquid should be the consistency of double cream (add a little water if it is any thicker).

Add salt and pepper to your own taste.

Before serving reheat, add the double cream and any prawn meat that you managed to save.