Prawn Cocktail with Dilmah English Afternoon Tea

Prawn Cocktail with Dilmah English Afternoon Tea

The Canyons of Chihuahua in Northern Mexico are hundreds of miles from the coast and the last place you would expect to find great seafood, but the wealthy owners of the local mines always had great seafood flown in with visitors and dishes like this prawn cocktail became staples of the local restaurants. This dish is traditionally eaten the morning after a fiesta as a pick-me-up. Its fresh flavours and prawns are seasoned with the extraordinary flavour of arí – a gum produced by ants.

Author: Peter Kuruvita
Serves: 1
Preparation time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
1 garlic clove, peeled
5 pequin chillies
1 tsp English Afternoon tea
150 ml Dilmah English Afternoon tea, brewed and chilled
100 ml tomato juice
Salt, to taste
Cracked black pepper, to taste
50 g cooked octopus, chopped
50 g cooked calamari, chopped
½ cup peeled, diced short cucumber
¼ cup diced tomato
1 tbsp diced jalapeño chilli
2 tbsp chopped red onion
1 tbsp chopped coriander
1 tbsp chopped spring onion
120 g poached peeled prawns
Juice of ½ a lime
½ an avocado, peeled and sliced

1 tsp chopped coriander
1 tsp chopped spring onion
20 g water crackers
10 g lightly salted corn chips

Method
Place the garlic clove, pequin chillies and 1 teaspoon of Dilmah English afternoon tea in the base of a large mortar and pestle and crush to a fine paste. Add the tea stock and tomato juice, season with salt and pepper and mix through. If you are making multiple portions or want to serve the cocktail in an alternate bowl, transfer the mixture into serving dishes at this point.
Add the ingredients in the following order, distributing them gently around the bowl for presentation. First Octopus, then calamari, cucumber, tomato, jalapeño chilli, red onion, chopped coriander and finally the chopped spring onion.
Arrange the prawns on top of the dish then dress with the lime juice. Arrange the avocado around the plate, then garnish with the remaining coriander and spring onion. Serve with water crackers and corn chips.

Sip Into Spring With Tea Gastronomy

Tea accounts for 13.8% of the grocery value in the food industry and due to the current tea gastronomy trend, and the rise of the home chef, demand is growing rapidly. To celebrate the return of spring, Dilmah ambassador Peter Kuruvita has created a series of unique recipes using seasonal produce and infused with the delicate aromas of tea, bringing a little restaurant flair to home cooking.

Renowned celebrity chef and restaurateur Peter has selected fresh and seasonal ingredients such as avocados, mangos, chillies and the finest tea varieties to create a selection of exciting and sophisticated dishes perfect for warm spring evenings at home.

Tea gastronomy involves the understanding of different teas and their character and the creative use of tea as a core ingredient in cuisine and beverages. Cooking with tea is proving to be an enduring category in modern cuisine, therefore working creatively with this ingredient is becoming a necessary skill for the contemporary cook.

The recipes use Dilmah's Single Region Selection teas, handpicked from specific regions in Sri Lanka. With varieties including Earl Grey, Ceylon Supreme, English Afternoon and English Breakfast, their differences in aroma, flavour, strength and colour make them distinctive ingredients, suitable for a range of recipes. One of the easiest methods of infusing the qualities of tea into a dish is using a simple smoking method. To create his smoked trout tostada, Kuruvita adds a strong earthy tone to the dish by smoking the fish using Ceylon Supreme tea then rounds it out using nutty seeds, a warm layer of spice, seasonal spring onions and mangos.

It doesn't matter if you're a novice or a true connoisseur, incorporating tea as a gastronomic ingredient is a simple way to create food with the wow factor.