My 5 Forever Festive Prawn Recipes and a fabulous Marie Rose Seafood Sauce

We have 4 kg of green King Prawns sitting in our freezer, waiting to be cooked up for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Our prawns are from the famous Karumba, in the Gulf Country region of Queensland, Australia, which by the way we happened to visit a few years ago on a camping trip. Karumba is a beautiful spot to visit in Winter, too hot in Summer for us to enjoy, and well known for it's prawn industry. 

Supermarkets here are selling Karumba prawns in bulk for around $17.00 a kilo, and they won't come in much cheaper this Christmas. I cooked a kilo of the prawns in an easy Creamy Prawn Carbonara just recently, and they were delicious. I know I promised 5 prawn recipes, but the good news is I am giving you six. A Christmas present for you. You will find the 6th shortcut recipe which I haven't published before at the end of this story. 

I hope you think that there is a delicious prawn recipe for every occasion in this post, and what you will prefer might depend on which Hemisphere you are living in. However at the moment, here in very tropical Cairns, the air-conditioning is on 24/7 because of the heat, so any of these dishes will be perfect for us. They are all tried, tested and perfect.

Vietnamese Prawn Salad

Retro Prawn Cocktail drizzled with Marie Rose Sauce. It might be retro, but it is still very enjoyable to eat.

Prawn Taglierini

Prawn Curry with rice. Classic prawn curry flavours, always a favourite.

Creamy White Wine Garlic Prawns

Prawn Carbonara

Christmas and the holiday season can be hectic for many people, with family coming to stay and visitors calling in for drinks. It's lovely to see them all, but sometimes during all of this activity we need to be able to just throw together a meal which still tastes amazing but is easy to prepare. As my regular readers know, I prefer to cook everything from scratch. However, there are times when a good quality bottled sauce can save our sanity, and act as the perfect base to which we can add fresh ingredients. This is one of those recipes. I've used this bottled Carbonara pasta sauce twice now, and both times it was delicious. The first time I just added onion, bacon and mushrooms, and everyone thought it was made from scratch. 

 I made this Prawn and Mushroom recipe, just last week, and honestly I couldn't believe how great it tasted. Carbonara sauce is fiddly to make from scratch, so I think we can break the rules occasionally, and take a shortcut, don't you?

We served the the Prawn Carbonara with some freshly made pasta. Mr. HRK made a small batch of pasta, his specialty, however any preferred pasta will do.

Ingredients:

Serves 4

1 bottle of Dolmio Creamy Carbonara pasta sauce

1 finely chopped onion

250 g chopped mushrooms (more if you wish)

1 kilo large green prawns, peeled, veins removed and rinsed

Finely chopped parsley for serving, if you have it

Cooked pasta for serving, 80 g per person

Method:

Home made pasta waiting to be cooked

Perfectly cooked pasta. In general, 80 g of pasta is a standard serving size per person.

Take a bottle of Dolmio Creamy Carbonara pasta sauce. (no advertising intended here.)

Add a chopped onion to a splosh of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a pan, and saute the onion until transparent.

Add the jar of Carbonara sauce to the onion in the pan, and add 250 g of chopped mushrooms. 

Use more mushrooms if you wish.

Simmer the sauce until the mushrooms are almost cooked.

Add the prawns, and simmer for 2-3 minutes in the sauce until they become pink in colour. This won't take long, and it's important not to overcook the prawns or they will toughen up. Gently does it.

Serve with your freshly cooked pasta and sprinkle with chopped parsley. 

Please just imagine there is fresh green parsley on my dish. I cooked this at our daughter's home in Cairns where we don't have fresh parsley growing, and with a lot going on I forgot to buy some. Never mind, it still tasted amazing.

Merry Christmas my friends.

Warm wishes,

Pauline