You say “prawn”, I say “shrimp”, let’s call the whole thing risotto….
Is there a difference between prawns and shrimp? In colloquial usage, generally not. Many of us use the two terms interchangeably. It’s a cultural given that folk from the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, lean towards prawn, while those from the US and Canada tend to use shrimp. And even in fishing circles they’re often substituted one for the other. But they are actually different critters, not that you’re likely to spend time in the fish market trying to figure out which is which.
If you paid attention in biology, many moons ago, you might remember that whole taxonomic structure of “Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Suborder, Family, Genus, and Species”. (When I was taking biology, we didn’t have Suborder, we jumped straight from Order to Family, but apparently that’s changed.) Prawns and shrimp are cool down through Order, the “decapods”, which means they both have 10 legs. But shrimp belong to Suborder pleocyemata, which also includes, apparently thousands of varieties of shrimp, crab, lobster, and crayfish, while prawns belong to Suborder dendrobranchiata, which includes, well, prawns – 540 species of them.
A little over 3/4 of shrimp are saltwater, only a 1/4 from freshwater, while the reverse is roughly true for prawns. Shrimp keep their eggs clustered about or in their bodies while they gestate, prawns release their eggs into the water and let them develop on their own. Anatomically there are differences, the biggest being the way the segments of their bodies overlap – with shrimp (and lobsters, and crayfish), the body, the thorax, is the bigger part, and overlaps over the head and the tail, while in prawns, it’s the reverse, the head overlaps on top of the body, which overlaps on top off the tail, in segments. Apparently, for whatever reason because of the way the overlaps work, shrimp can curl up, while prawns can’t.
But all that’s just the science stuff. In the end, both taste pretty much the same. Supposedly, prawns, in general, are slightly sweeter, but that’s more a function, I gather, of them being more likely to be freshwater species.
So, what’s the dish?
Prawn & Shrimp Risotto with 64ˆ Egg
We had three different species involved here – those little teeny dried shrimp used in Asian cooking, fresh red shrimp from the Argentine coast, and fresh larger prawns from the Chilean coast. I used the heads of both of the fresh ones to make a stock, just simply simmering them in water with a little salt for about 30 minutes, and then pressing them to get as much flavor into the liquid as possible. The tails and shells went into a half and half mix of olive oil and corn oil, and kept on low heat for a couple of hours to infuse the oil with their flavor.
The risotto itself, started by toasting a handful of dried shrimp and a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in olive oil, then added carnaroli rice, toasted that a bit, then a good glug or two of white wine, let that absorb, and then proceeded to cook the risotto in traditional fashion, a ladle of the stock at a time until cooked al dente. I chopped up the fresh shrimp along with some green onion, and added that in during the last five minutes of cooking the risotto, and then finished it off with butter, and adjusted the seasoning with salt and white pepper.
The peeled prawns, deveined of course (as were the shrimp), I sauteed in butter with equal amounts of three paprikas – hot, sweet, and smoked, and a pinch of salt. I cooked eggs sous vide at 64°C, to just set them, jelly like. I blanched and shocked a handful of parsley and then pureed it with a pinch of salt. And, last ingredient, some toasted and then chopped peeled almonds.
And then it was time to plate the dish. A scoop of risotto, then nestle the egg into it, place a large prawn alongside the egg, spoon a little parsley puree over it all, and surround the risotto with a good squirt of the flavored oil. And then a spoonful of the chopped toasted almonds over the top.
And that, my friends, was our Prawn & Shrimp Risotto with 64ˆ Egg.
