For the next dish from my Irish cook up, I present Dublin Lawyer, which I didn’t completely choose just because of its name. Although, admittedly it is a pretty catchy title. I’ve read it has something to do with the original dish, which was a combination of lobster simmered in cream and whiskey, rendering it rich as a Dublin lawyer.
This recipe isn’t too complicated, you want to make sure your pan heat isn’t too high as nothing should start to brown. Same with reducing the sauce after you add the cream, just a gentle simmer is the way to go. The speed at which the whiskey lights up still surprised me the second time I made this, so please keep you eyebrows at a safe distance (it does however look super impressive)! The original recipe stated heavy cream, but as the only cream easily available where I live is whipping cream (Schlagsahne – still a complete puzzle to me why a culture with so much cream in their food; Tortes, Kartoffelrahmsuppe, anything involving a mushroom etc. has only one type of cream in their supermarket) I used that, and it still turned out pretty good.
Keep in mind that the quality of this dish will be as good as the prawns you use, and you do want to give them a dry before adding them to the pan so you don’t water down your nicely reduced sauce. I think this goes very well with some fresh Irish soda bread, but we also had colcannon on the Irish evening that soaked up the sauce pretty well too. On two very un-Irish notes, I put a healthy dose of dried chilli in mine because I loved the kick (although I know Irish food is never spicy), and I think a nice fresh green salad would balance out the heaviness of the cream sauce well, but again somewhat nontraditional I believe.
I hope you give this a go, even just because it has such a dastardly awesome name!
Dublin Lawyer (Prawns in Whiskey Cream)
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp butter
- 4 spring onions
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 tsp dried chilli powder
- Salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup Irish whiskey
- 1 1/2 cups cream
- 1 tbsp parsley finely chopped
- 450 g large prawns peeled, deveined and patted dry
Instructions
- Finely chop the spring onions and garlic.
- Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add the butter. Once melted add in the spring onions and saute for a few minutes until soft, turning down the heat if they start to brown.
- Throw in the garlic and chilli powder and season with salt and pepper.
- Take the pan off the heat and pour in the whiskey, using a long lighter or match, set the whiskey alight*.
- Once the flame has died down, put the pan back on the heat and add in the cream. Bring to a simmer and stir for 5-10 minutes until the sauce has thickened a little bit.
- Stir in the chopped parsley and then throw the prawns in, simmer gentle for another few minutes until they are just pink.
- Serve immediately with a little extra parley sprinkled on top and some nice fresh soda bread on the side to mop everything up if you wish.
