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    Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share
    Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share
    Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share
    Ebook260 pages1 hour

    Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share

    By Rick Toogood and Katie Toogood

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    About this ebook

    Ideal for the foodie who loves entertaining and wants to recreate restaurant-quality food without the fuss, Prawn on the Lawn is a collection of quick, fresh, healthy and delicious fish and seafood recipes.

    This contemporary and fresh take on fish cookery comes from the trendiest fish restaurant on the block, and lays bare their simple techniques for creating amazing food with maximum impact. Chapters include Cold Tapas, Hot Tapas, Large Plates, Sides, Desserts & Cocktails.

    Named by The Sunday Times in the Top 100 restaurants in the UK, Prawn on the Lawn offers sharing plates with a difference. Following suit, this book shares the restaurant recipes so that you can easily select your perfect compilation for the ideal dinner-party menu. Chef-owners Rick and Katie Toogood help you deliver their unique brand of light, zingy and delicious fish and seafood meals.

    From their signature ‘prawn on the lawn’ (avocado and chilli on toast topped with cooked prawns) to succulent scallop ceviche, beetroot-cured salmon and razor clams with nam jim, to crab adobo – it’s all delicious and guarantees wow factor. With wine and beer pairings, a selection of delicious cocktail recipes and tips for adapting recipes to party size, budget, fish preference and seasonality, this book makes hosting friends and family easy. There’s also a handy buyer’s guide, offering everything you need to know to become an a-fish-ionado!

    ‘This is the sort of place you would visit daily if you could.’ The Sunday Times

    Foreword by Mitch Tonks.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 3, 2018
    ISBN9781911624271
    Prawn on the Lawn: Fish and seafood to share
    Author

    Rick Toogood

    Established in 2013 by Rick Toogood and his wife Katie, Prawn on the Lawn began life as a seafood bar and fishmonger near Islington’s buzzing Upper Street, and has now been extended to a restaurant, serving only the freshest seafood and tapas-style fish dishes. Within the first year of opening POTL reached No. 1 on Tripadvisor’s restaurant poll, beating even the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc. They have also featured on Channel 4’s ‘Jamie and Jimmy’s Food Fight’ and BBC’s ‘Masterchef’, and look certain to maintain their position as one of the most exciting restaurants and fishmongers in London. A second site followed in seafood mecca Padstow, Cornwall, where they now live year-round. As educational as they are inventive, POTL also offers private fish-filleting classes and wine tasting and continues to support the Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall.

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      Book preview

      Prawn on the Lawn - Rick Toogood

      illustrationIllustration

      FISH AND SEAFOOD

      TO SHARE

      IllustrationIllustration

      Contents

      Foreword

      Prawn on the Lawn

      Sourcing Fish and Seafood

      Sterilizing Jars

      Key Marinades and Recipes

      Cold Tapas

      Hot Tapas

      Large Plates

      Sides

      Desserts and Cocktails

      Index

      Suppliers

      Acknowledgements

      Illustration

      Foreword

      The one thing all my favourite seafood restaurants have in common is that the chefs and owners understand seafood to such a level that it is evident in the way every fish is prepared and cooked. This is very much true of Prawn on the Lawn, a gem of a restaurant, run by my friends Rick and Katie. In their first restaurant, they didn’t have cooking facilities, so light marinations, cures and raw fish is where these guys started. I loved the idea of a beautiful fish counter you could choose from and then have your selection simply prepared in front of you while you enjoyed a glass of wine – it was brilliant. I think it was due to this restricted kitchen set-up that Rick’s food developed the character it has today.

      Simple preparation and cooking of seafood takes some skill – the delicate textures of seafood really shine when the balance of flavours are just right. I love the hit of flavour of the POTL som tam crab salad – fresh, hot, fragrant, salty and cooling – a heady mouthful, especially with freshly picked crab that is somehow not overpowered by it all. It amounts to a plate prepared by a chef that has a real connection to what he is cooking – and that’s Rick, he just gets it. So, sitting in any of their restaurants, with a whole crab, a plate of crispy fried seafood or some fresh oysters in front of you, is a joy, whether in the city or by the sea.

      I think restaurants are a little about food and lot about other things too. When the balance of everything is right, the whole experience is wonderful. Most of the time you can’t put your finger on what it is that makes it all work. I believe there is a sort of umami in certain restaurants, just as there is in the world of flavor – you love it, but you don’t quite know what it is. I feel that sense of wholeness at POTL. The fish is the star of the room – it sits on the counter in all its glory letting you know what the place is all about, whilst the simple decor is personal and comfortable. A short wine list makes things easy, and the service from Katie and her team is good old-fashioned hospitality that makes you feel so welcome.

      I really enjoy Rick’s company; whenever a few of us foodie people make our annual trip to Italy to enjoy friendship and truffles, it’s not long before we are discussing our mutual love of fish and seafood. Rick has always been somewhere new, or has a trip planned to far-off places, to do the hard research all restauranteurs have to do! And I always want to hear about it. I believe it’s through travel, eating and life experience that we become better cooks and restaurateurs, and that is certainly true of POTL. The last time I ate there, I could sense Rick had been to Spain; crisp-fried whole red mullet, punchy romesco sauce and clams were on the menu, taking me right back to the sheer pleasure of simple seafood such as I first experienced myself in Barcelona many years ago.

      I shall enjoy having POTL on my bookshelf – it’s another great book to introduce the home cook to the joys of seafood cookery, to keep the experienced cook on the straight and narrow, and to remind us that it’s all about the quality of seafood and simple preparations – deviate from this at your peril!

      Mitch Tonks

      Illustration

      Prawn on the Lawn

      Our restaurant, Prawn on the Lawn, is built around a pretty clear ethos: Katie and I wanted to create a place where we would love to work, a place where our staff would love to serve great food and a place in which our customers would love to spend time. Moreover, we wanted to create an opportunity to share – share our knowledge and our passion for seafood, share where our ingredients come from, share our hospitality with each person that steps through the door, and ultimately, hopefully, share an enjoyable and memorable experience for all.

      It feels like a lifetime ago when it all started. After completing a design degree at university, I was lost as to what route to take. A job in China made me realize that a life sat behind a desk wasn’t for me. My mum came to the rescue, and asked me to write down the top three things I was most passionate about. Food came out on top, so off I went to work in a restaurant.

      My first job was front of house in a restaurant near to where I grew up in Buckinghamshire – I learned a lot from that experience. Then I moved to London and continued working front of house, working my way up the ranks to become general manager of a fish restaurant, but I struggled with not being able to do things my way; my design degree was subconsciously at work, redesigning the dining experience. Along the way I met Katie – she was working in the music industry at various record labels in London. She was focused, driven and ambitious, with an equal desire to do things her way. ‘My way’ and ‘her way’ soon became our way!

      I left my restaurant job and set about finding a site for us to start our own project. We decided that opening a full-blown restaurant was biting off more than we could chew – or afford! We had weeks of viewings all over north London (where we were living at the time) but nothing was suitable. A good mate of mine sent me a picture of an empty butcher’s shop he cycled past. We met up with the landlord and couldn’t believe our luck; he gave us the start we needed, a rent-free period with staged increases in rent. We’ll be eternally grateful to him, for helping us get our dream off the ground.

      We had a site, now for a name. The only option was to get a couple of bottles of wine, sit in the park, and see what happened. Katie jokingly blurted out ‘Prawn on the Lawn’, but it took a couple of weeks for us to realize that this was the perfect name.

      When we started to work on the shop, we decided it was going to be a fishmonger’s where you could sit and have a glass of wine with some oysters or maybe a cooked crab with some crusty bread. We wanted the styling to be reminiscent of a classic fishmonger’s, but without the stainless steel, spray-the-walls-down feel to it. The shop was to have wine barrels and bar seating to encourage an informal vibe where people could share the space with others. We did everything on a budget: antique shops, reclaimed materials – you name it, we sourced it to get the dream started.

      We enlisted the help of everyone we could think of. One of my brothers sorted out the bespoke fish counter, working through the night to help me build it. Next, we needed a logo and branding – its creation is a perfect example of the support we’ve had from family and friends. The typeface was done by my cousin, the illustration of the prawn in the deckchair by a friend, and it was all put together and styled by my best mate (and best man). Our website was kept up to date and run by my other brother. This sort of support has carried us through our entire Prawn on the Lawn life. We’ve had people dropping everything and throwing on a POTL shirt to wait tables, wash dishes and run food stalls for us.

      At the beginning, I worked full time in our restaurant with one other member of staff. Katie kept her day job, working evenings and Saturdays front of house. Soon, we found

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