Prawn cutlets with sweet potato wedges

Most of you my dear readers who are frequent visitors to my space in the digital world would be well aware of my passion for cooking food and blogging about it to share it with all food enthusiasts like myself for the pure joy & happiness that it gives me and what better way than to share the smiles than through a blog post? 

Baking especially has been a deeply nourished passion that has been simmering within me since I was young enough to handle the oven and one that occasionally erupts bringing me to a sense of ecstasy when I bake something out of my favourite cookbook. I have a A5 journal that was gifted to me by my elder son Rohan for mother’s day and that little book has the choicest of my recipes written specially for the apple of my eye to experiment and try out in his kitchen when he is old enough to handle an oven independently. Blogging was that beautiful realisation of mine that gave me a podium, a pedestal from which I could express my love for food and share it with all you who nourish this passion like me. Food is not just for the body, it is pure unadulterated music for the soul. Something that not just nourishes the body but also elevates us to that higher plane where creativity flows unchecked like an impish little child. I always thought that the magic of words were enough to express my deepest desire and love for food. 

Photography has been a new found love and one that seems to preoccupy all of my spare time in imagining the angle from which to shoot and formulating the delicate balance of ISO, Shutter speed and focal length. There are a few minor things to grasp and once you are over this hurdle and you know how to use the metering shooting RAW files in a manual mode is the same kind of thrill you feel when you have learnt to drive a stick shift geared car for the first time. The manual mode gives you heaps of control and allows for you to be as creative as you want to be and not be a slave to lighting or having to work outdoors and having to rely on the auto mode hoping against hope that the image turns out to be what you want it to be. 

A good still photograph can relate a story that sometimes words may fail to express. Some of you perhaps remember that haunting picture of the young Afghan girl staring straight into the lens in a war ravaged country on the covers of National Geographic a few years back and the editor did not even have to write single sentence. The image alone conveyed all the stories and what is best is that it conveyed to each one a story that one was searching for. 

I am in no way even remotely close to taking pictures like that but images of food and of products have caught my attention so deep that I now search in these still images the story that they tell and retell. Recently I was approached by a friend of mine to take some pictures of her beautiful online portal for handcrafted luxury items. I took some of her pictures in various settings and you can see them here Melange Chic. Her items are so beautiful & tempting and I had to try my best to do justice to showcase it.

If you are like me new to the world of images and capturing stories on a digital file there are loads of resources out there that will get you started. I have found my calling in shooting food and portraying them, hoping one day that one of  you my readers would simply make the mistake of biting into her IPad or I phone  or tablet just because my photograph looked so tempting and appetising that it blurred the distance between reality and fiction. Till then I am a happy little trigger girl cooking, baking and photographing….

I suppose I have already done a lot of talking and chatting, let me navigate you on to today's post, prawn cutlets with sweet potatoes wedges.Nothing more can I say about this finger licking delicacy, if you drive down to the coast on a holiday and the fisherman’s basket is your choice of tucker, then here we go. Prawns cutlets and with a twist to the fries substituting them with the goodness of Sweet potato fries. 

Using the same process that I have used for prawn cutlets, I crumbed the bass fillet and baked it at 200"C for 20 minutes or until golden brown instead of deep frying it.

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Prawn cutlets

by Shibani of pearlsofeast June-10-2016

Delicious Crunchy Prawn cutlet

Ingredients

• 500g Large Raw banana prawns or king prawns 
• 1 cup plain flour
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 2 egg
• 2 cups bread crumbs
• salt, pepper (garlic powder and chilli powder)

Instructions

1. Shell 1kg of medium king prawns, leaving their tails on. Make a cut the length of each prawn's back and remove the digestive tract. 
2. Make another cut, a little deeper, so the prawn meat "butterflies" open. If the prawns are large, it may be necessary to flatten them gently with a wide-bladed knife. 
3. To crumb the cutlets Set up three flat plates in this order: one with plain flour with cornflour and flavour it with garlic powder, chilli powder, one with 2 well-beaten eggs and the last with bread crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. 
4. Dust each cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg and finally in the crumbs, pressing well
5. Heat oil in frying pan and deep fry it on it medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes until golden brown. They cook very quickly.

Sweet potato wedges

Cut sweet potatoes into wedges. In a bowl, toss the wedges with olive oil, paprika and season it with salt and pepper. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer on a greased baking tray and bake them for 20 to 30 minutes at 200'C or until soft and lightly browned.