Recipe: How to make mouth-watering prawn tacos
Quick, easy and crowd-pleasing, this recipe from new Bondi establishment Calita is perfect for summer entertaining.
Prawns should be included in ‘beginners’ recipes more often. The thing is, they’re deceptively easy to cook and if marinated correctly (it’s not as daunting as it sounds), they can really make a dish sing.
And in no dish does the humble prawn sing like it does in Calita’s Baja-inspired prawn tacos. The marisqueria (meaning seafood restaurant in Spanish) has recently opened in Bondi, where its house-made tacos and morish share plates have already developed a reputation as some of the best in Sydney. With an airy, whitewashed interior you can’t help but snap for the ’gram, you might say that Calita has all the elements of a perpetually-booked-out Bondi restaurant.
Recently, we had the chance to recreate its ‘Governor’s Tacos XO’ at home. And either I’m a better cook that I care to think, or Calita’s head chef knows how to arrange a no-fail recipe (it’s probably the latter). But the main thing is, these tacos were super simple to prepare, easy to assemble and addictively delicious.
So much so, the kind people at Calita allowed us to share the recipe with us.
Calita’s ‘Governor’s Taco XO’ Recipe
Level: Easy. Prep Time: 15 mins. Cook Time: 20 mins.
Ingredients:
100g unsalted butter
2 Tablespoon EVO
2 Poblano chiles – seeded, diced small.
1 white onion, diced small 1mm
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
3 Tablespoon XO sauce
1 Tablespoon Chipotle in adobo
400g peeled raw prawn cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon sour cream
Salt
1 teaspoon Mexican oregano
250g shredded Oaxaca cheese
Flour tortillas.
For Serving:
3 limes cut into wedges
coriander leaves.
Method:
1. Melt the butter on a large pan over medium-high heat (reserve half of it on the side for brushing the tacos). Drizzle 2 tablespoon of EVO and start sauteing the onion and poblano chillies until softened (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and diced tomatoes and cook for another 3 minutes.
2. Add the XO sauce, chipotle chilli and prawns, stirring the mix until prawns are just cooked through, season with salt, oregano, take out of the heat and stir in the sour cream, reserve.
2. Heat your tortillas on a flat top side-by-side, turn upside down once they start to get some colour, add on a friendly portion of cheese and allow to melt a little. Spoon in some of the prawn mix and fold over the tacos brushing them with the melted butter on the outside, crisp up your tacos and repeat on the other side – you might get lucky enough to get some of the cheese crisping up as well.
4. Serve straight away. Garnish with lime and coriander.