Cookbook Challenge: recipes from Rick and Katie Toogood’s Prawn on the Lawn: fish and seafood to share

A cerviche of scallops and a mackerel curry, Victoria Stewart tries her hand at some serious seafood recipes
Scallop Cerviche was one of Victoria's challenges
Prawn on the Lawn: fish and seafood to share
Victoria Stewart28 February 2018

Small kitchens call for creative problem solving - finding ways to use what little equipment you have to come up with great dishes.

Just think of the TV cook and author Rachel Khoo, made famous by her BBC 2 series The Little Paris Kitchen, where she showed it was possible to cook and serve classic French dishes from inside a kitchen barely big enough to swing a saucepan.

When Rick and Katie Toogood came up with their idea for Prawn on the Lawn in Islington, they planned to start a small, informal fishmonger-style operation where people might also slide in for a glass of wine with some oysters. This did well, enabling them to expand downstairs - but with only a retail license, the Toogoods were restricted in what food they could serve, giving Rick the challenge of “experimenting with ceviches, pickles, cures and poaching fish. It was challenging at first, but I soon enjoyed coming up with new dishes every week: the key note of every dish was to allow the fish to shine through.” This he writes in his and Katie’s new cookbook, ‘Prawn on the Lawn: fish and seafood to share.’

From the start the couple - neither of whom were trained chefs, but both had a passion for the industry - worked very closely with fisherman in Padstow, Cornwall, to supply them with fresh produce on a regular basis. This meant visiting the area regularly until the return journey to London “became harder and harder.” Eventually they opened a second restaurant nearby, this time with a bigger kitchen.

Their new book is charming, offering fun and straightforward ideas for cooking a range of fish and seafood. After an introduction written by one of Cornwall’s seafood masters, Mitch Tonks, who writes of Rick’s “real connection to what he cooking” and the “joy” of eating in either of the PONL restaurants, they tell their own story. There’s also a short paragraph on sourcing (“don’t be afraid to ask your fishmonger questions”) and on the importance of sterilizing pickling jars.

Among the recipes are a few key marinades, suggestions for cold tapas (smoked mackerel pate or ndjua squid, for example), hot tapas (crispy Falmouth Bay shrimp with sriracha creme fraiche or crab-stuffed courgette flowers) and large plates (Schezuan prawns and brill with lardo and red onions), alongside sides (brown shrimp with asparagus or tomato and tarragon salad), desserts and cocktails.

The book assumes some prior knowledge of fish and seafood - say, in understanding how to prepare the produce for cooking. This is fine, but given how straightforward the recipes are and therefore the wide range of readers it might attract, I’d have liked a short tip next to each dish, from them or a fishmonger, pointing out what to look for when buying the fish, and how to prepare it before cooking.

Beyond that I like how easy it is to follow their instructions and come up with fresh, delicious dishes. The short booze pairing tips (wine or beer) next to each recipe also works well.

This is an easygoing, unpretentious book of recipes that I hope to return to.

Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share

What Victoria cooked:

Starter: Scallop ceviche

This was the easiest of the lot to prepare, but its success relies on sharp knives and good quality fish from the fishmonger. Once you’ve made the tiger milk by blitzing lime, celery, garlic and green chilli, you need to ladle it over the scallop before adding red chilli and passion fruit. The lime smacks you in the face, although isn’t overwhelmed by chilli, and both allow the flavour of the fish to come through. This is a good show dish, but not necessarily apt for a dinner party given that you have to finish it up the moment before you want to serve in order not to overpower the scallops.

Main: Mackerel curry with toasted peanuts

This isn’t so much a curry as a curry marinade to put over fish. In any case, it’s easy to follow - frying onions, garlic and chilli, toasting spices, and whizzing it all up into a paste to place over the fish - and is fresh and flavoursome. Using fillets instead of whole mackerels, I laid the mixture over the top of these for three quarters of the cooking time, and all three received high praise from my friends.

Pudding: Salted caramel pot

This was the only let down of the three, as the quantities were all wrong. Once I’d made the caramel and ladled it over crumbled Amaretti biscuits, I put each pot in the fridge as suggested but after 20 minutes - unsurprisingly - the whole thing had set solid making it virtually impossible to cut through. On its own the mixture was alright (who can argue with caramel and biscuits), but the best mouthfuls incorporated the creme fraiche, mint and raspberry for balance.

Prawn on the Lawn: fish and seafood to share’ by Rick and Katie Toogood is out now (Pavilion, £18.99)

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