Jo Eats... Mallorca: Part II
This post should probably be titled Jo Eats... Prawns, but I'd already set myself up with the series name so never mind. I think we ate prawns every single day we were in Mallorca, and not one of those ten or so dishes was anything but brilliant. It is not rocket science: massive fresh prawns straight out the Med, douse in sizzling garlic oil. Anything would taste good in that garlic oil. But still, I wanted to show you a few of the best ones we had. Here are a few in the traditional garlic oil - some had the addition of dried chillis which gave a tiny bit of piquancy:
Look at those lovely hefty chunks of garlic!
Mmmm.
Chives were a bit of an odd addition to this dish, above. This restaurant was trying to be a bit more global in its cuisine, as you can see from the spinach gyoza and the tuna avocado tartare above. I have to say that the more authentic Spanish dishes were miles better than any of the other things they attempted. The tuna was actually fantastic - uber fresh and with the right amount of acidic bite in the dressing, but another day we went and they had a salmon tartare with - wait for it - goats cheese.... No. Just no. We ordered it out of morbid curiosity and were sadly rewarded with being thoroughly correct in our initial estimations; salmon and goats cheese do not happy bedfellows make. However, the sizzling prawns were as good as any others we had, and their manchego platter with Iberico was truly great.
Back to the prawns though. One of my favourite lunches was at a ropey looking tiny place off of the marina which we went to as Rich was craving pizza (surprise surprise) and their's looked ok. The pizza was not good, but when you've had amazing Italian pizzas fresh in your mind, swiftly followed by the Napolitan Pizza Pilgrims ones, they're just not going to be, are they? Luckily, the prawns were. Served whole and very lightly breaded and fried, these were an absolute joy to stick on a piece of bread with a good splodge of allioli (am addicted) and wolf down. The prawns pictured below are a half portion, which most of the restaurants there do as an option, and were only €5.50.
Finally, the Pintxos bar in Palma that I mentioned in my post yesterday had another interesting way of serving the gambas - they baked them in a super yellow allioli, which was more like the rich saffron garlic sauce that I'm used to. Most of the restaurants there serve an almost whipped moussey pure white garlic allioli. Both are beyond delicious, but here they served it hot in the skillet. They were very mean with the prawns, just four little tiddlers, but it was a novel way to serve them and the remaining sauce was perfect for slathering over any remaining carbohydrates.
I'm now on a mission to recreate the perfect prawns and allioli dish, so do send me your tips if you have any. Adios for now, final post to come shortly and then we'll be back to normal service.