hawaiian prawn burger with pickled courgette

another bill granger recipe, this time with seafood as the focus – prawns.

i’ve never made a prawn burger before and was a little sceptical but decided that the combination of other flavours seemed interesting and liked the way bill described it:  “the clean, fresh flavours of this burger really sum up the food of hawaii: tasty, healthy, wholesome and a little bit exotic.”.

it also seemed like a good way to use up some pickled red onions that were lurking in the fridge and thankfully, the end result is very delicious, albeit not particularly filling ( i was glad we’d kicked off our meal with a tomato & mozzarella salad).

you’ll see below that i adapted the original recipe to suit what i had in – using pickled onions in place of radishes and yoghurt in place of mayonnaise for the spicy dressing – but one thing i think you do need to stick with is the suggested soft bun – this really works well with the textures of the other components of the dish.

shrimp burger with pickled courgette and radish (makes 2 burgers)

250g raw shrimp, peeled, deveined and pulsed in a food processor to a coarse paste

100g raw shrimp, peeled, deveined and roughly chopped

2cm piece ginger, grated

2 spring onions, finely chopped

½ a red chilli, finely chopped

2 tbsp kewpie japanese mayonnaise or other good-quality mayo (i used greek yoghurt)

2 tbsp sriracha* or chilli sauce

1 tbsp light-flavoured oil

for the pickles:

2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar

½ teaspoon sugar

½ courgette, thinly sliced on a mandolin

4 radishes, thinly sliced on a mandolin

to serve:

soft white rolls

first, make the pickles: mix the vinegar and sugar then add the courgette and radish and set aside. now mix the mayonnaise and the sriracha sauce together and set aside.

put all the raw shrimp, ginger, spring onion and chilli into a bowl and mix to combine. divide the mixture in half and form two patties. heat the oil in a frying pan then cook the patties for 6 minutes, turning halfway through.

split the buns and top with a shrimp burger, some pickled veg and a big dollop of the spicy mayonnaise.

* i remembered an old article about gwyneth paltrow's homemade sriracha sauce which i looked up - this blog post put me off making it and also made me laugh a lot.