Refreshing mango & prawn skewers

A perfect dinner or snack for these lovely sunny days! You can also fire up your barbecue and grill them. The sweet mango is balanced by the tangy & spicy coating.

This recipe is the typical example of a what happens when your weekly shopping is a bit random. In this instance random buying (or as I call it "inspiration buying") has yielded a dish, which I have now entered in our summery dishes rotation. But I could name you countless times, when random weekly shopping has not worked out so well!

What I really love about this dish is the combination of all the different flavours: sweetness from the mango, meatiness of the prawns, the acidity of the lime and the kick of the chilli flakes. We did not quite get around firing up our fire-pit outside, but these would be lovely over a barbecue , to really add the charred flavour.

Yields about 10 short skewers

Ingredients:

- 200g of cooked prawns

- 1 ripe mango

- 1 red pepper

- 1 lime

- chilli flakes

- smoked paprika

- white pepper

- olive oil

- coarse sea salt

Method:

Prepare the pepper and mango: deseed the pepper and cut into squares/rectangles; peal the mango and cut into cube-like chunks.

Prepare the marinade on the side: in a small bowl mix the lime juice, a bit of the lime zest, a teaspoon of chilli flakes (more or less depending to taste), a teaspoon of smoked paprika, a pinch of white pepper & salt. Add a tablespoon of oil and leave to infuse.

On the side, start assembling the skewers: alternate prawns, pepper & mango until you have used up all of the produce. To maximise space on the skewer, pierce the prawn once through & the peppers on the thin side.

Place a pan on the stove to heat up - you can also use a griddle pan or cook this on the barbecue once the flame has died down a bit. If cooking on the flame, it would be good to wet the skewers before assembling.

While the pan is heating, use a pastry brush to coat the skewers. Place in the pan (add a drop of oil if necessary to avoid the skewers sticking) and cook evenly on a high flame, rotating the skewers regularly. Whilst in the pan, keep coating the skewers with the pastry brush to infuse flavour - if you have leftover marinade at the end, pour it in the pan to round off the cooking and reduce.

Remove from the pan and serve hot.

Extra tips

I like to serve my skewers with coconut rice lettuce cups.

Simply cook some jasmine rice as directed - once ready and drained, add some dried coconut and mix through. Add a drop of sesame oil and serve on little gem lettuce leaves.

You can even add some more chilli flakes for extra heat.