Prawn and Gizzard Kebabs

Oh, you read that right. It is Prawn and Gizzard Kebabs. I was looking through my photo archives and I came across this picture. It makes me smile to see how far I’ve come with taking pictures. This is a great recipe, so I am writing about it regardless of the picture. I made this sometime last year when I was hosting friends. I had prawns in the freezer, sitting right by gizzards, and I thought, why not combine both and grill. My goodness, it was weird and delicious. I definitely got strange looks from my friends, but I assured them it was fine.

The first thing that will probably jump out at you is the difference in cooking times. Prawns cook faster than gizzards, and that posed a problem immediately. Once I get a weird food experiment in my head, I’m like a dog with a bone, I don’t give up until I find a way for it to work, and as always I did. Positive sides of being stubborn. Lol. Thanks to my mum who taught me to channel what is seemingly a negative personality trait, into something positive.  After a lot of screaming matches and intense battles of will between the both of us, which my dad was wise enough to stay out of (lol), I finally got the message and got with the program. Love that woman to bits.

Even if you don’t have prawns and gizzards in the freezer, this post is to inspire you to look into your fridge, freezer and store cupboard and let their contents speak to you. You never know what amazing concoctions you can come up with using the same old “boring” ingredients, and you end up with an interesting wow inducing dish.

You will need

1 packet of prawns

1 packet of gizzard

2 tablespoons of Olive oil

1/2 a Lemon

1 clove of Garlic

1 teaspoon powdered Ginger

1/2 large red Onions

1 handful of Basil – efinrin is a good substitute

sprinkling of Parsley

1 teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper – dry pepper

1 teaspoon of Curry powder

1 teaspoon of dried Thyme

Salt

1 seasoning cube – knorr chicken cube preferred

How To

1. Get out two bowls and prepare the marinade in both bowls. For the marinade, split the ingredients across the two bowls. Soak the wooden skewers in warm water, this is to prevent the wood from burning during grilling.

2. In one bowl add the gizzards and leave in the fridge to marinade for 30 – 45 minutes, after which you boil with 1 1/2 cups of water till it softens. Dooney’s Kitchen Tip: because of the difference in cooking times, you have to boil the gizzards first then you grill with the prawns

3. While the gizzards are cooking, add the prawns to the other bowl and leave in the fridge to marinade for 10 minutes. Dooney’s Kitchen Tip: due to the nature of the acidity of some of the contents of the marinade, especially the lemon juice, you don’t want to leave the prawns to marinade for too long, otherwise it will start cooking. Yes you can cook fish raw.

4. Now the gizzards have cooked, take out the prawns one by one from the bowl, leaving a little marinade left behind. Toss in the cooked gizzards into this marinade coating it again, as some of the initial marinade would have been lost to the stock.

5. Skewer the cooked gizzard and prawn one after the other, until they fill the length of the skewer, and place on a grill rack and whack into your oven. Turn the knob to grill and set the temperature to 220 for 10 minutes. By the 7 minute mark, give it a quick look. Depending on how hot your oven is, 7 minutes may be just fine.

……………and that’s it. How simple is that? When next you host, serve this to your guests. On second thought, you really don’t need a party to treat yourself, do you?

Please let me know what weird and strange concoctions you have come up with in the past based on using what you already had at home. If you have been inspired by this post to get more creative in your kitchen, please share with me what dishes you came up with.