I have heard of these langoustine from the stormy Atlantic coast of Brittany - that they get flown out fast as far as Japan to arrive alive in the kitchens of the top chefs. So I decided to have a closer look (and taste) and to find the perfect way of cooking prawns on the fire.
What is a langoustine?
Langoustine is the French name for Dublin Bay prawn or Norway lobster. It looks a bit like a freshwater crayfish and lives in tunnels under the seabed. Their shells are yellowish-pink (and do not change colour when cooked). They are 15 - 20 cm (6 v- 10 in) long with rigid, white-tipped pincers.
The Dublin Bay prawn in its tunnel.
In the UK the shelled tail meat is known as scampi (after the italian scampo, or the plural scampi).
They cannot live long out of the water and are usually sold cooked. The trick is to find them uncooked - alive and fresh. There are two ways of doing this - if you are a successful fund manager you can get them from the source to your fire by private jet, or otherwise you have to go and find them where they live - like I did.
The artesanal fishing port of Le Guilvenec
The prawn port of Le Guilvenec is in a picturesque century old fishing village. It is the foremost artesanal fishing port in France - the majority of the boats are owned and operated by the fishermen themselves. It is an area with a strong maritime tradition, and the local economy depends entirely on fishing.
Fishing port of Le Guilvenec, where the cooking prawns are landed.
The boats leave every morning around 5 am and return at around 5pm, with several hundred people (me included) eagerly awaiting their arrival in the port.
Cooking prawns - the second best recipe
Cooking prawns the conventional way is simple and delicious. You bring 1/2 a liter (2 cups) of water to the boil on a hot fire in a large pot. When it is boiling furiously, you add a big pinch of sea salt and 1 kg (around 2 pounds) of prawns. When it comes back on the boil, you leave it for two minutes only. Be brave - two minutes only! Then they will be perfect. Eat them with fresh homemade mayonnaise.
BBQ prawns - the best way of cooking them
Langoustine lined up belly down
I've tried several different ways of grilling the prawns - slowly over cool embers, high over hot embers and so on. But this is the way to bbq prawns: you arrange them on a grid basket with their bellies to the bottom and close the grid. Your embers must be hot and you need a blowpipe (or something else with which to fan the embers) standing by. Put the grid directly on the embers and start blowing air on the embers to heat them up to blistering or hotter. When you strong hear hissing and popping sounds coming from the bbq prawns, you are doing it right. After about one minute from when the hissing and popping start, you turn them over on their backs and you do the same thing. Blow! You need to scorch the shells, it releases a magnificent flavour into the flesh of the prawns. Two minutes later you take them off and have a feast.
Caveat: BBQ prawns come in different sizes, so you have to break one open to check for doneness. My happy experimentation was done with medium prawns (15cm). Check below how to peel a prawn.
How to peel BBQ prawns
You can peel a prawn as you want, of course, but this is fun and the tail meat comes out in one piece.
Break the front part off, suck it a little and discard.
Half-way down the tail, make a 1/4 turn to the right and a half-turn to the left while you -
press down strongly on the tail end.
Done correctly, you now have a whole prawn tail in your hand.
Be humane
When you cook live prawns, lobsters or other crustaceans, be humane (although this sounds like an oxymoron). I cool them down in the freezer until they are desensitised and then apply sudden and very hot heat to end life instantly.
The one-minute BBQ prawns cooking video starring Les Damoiselles de Loctudy
(Les Damoiselles de Loctudy is the nickname the locals call the prawns - the ladies of Loctudy - Loctudy is a small fishing port close to Le Guilvenec)
