Finger root prawn and vegetable skewers (Garden to table part 1 of 3)

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Finger root. I love how it’s name describes how it looks when ready to harvest. However, nothing in its name told me about the flavour profile of this homegrown gem.

The first thing I did to try and understand what the flavour of the finger root is like is to smell it. It had earthly tones (probably because it was freshly harvested from our soil), a little spice kick and notes of citrus. It reminded me of a combination of ginger, turmeric and lemon. I immediately thought of pairing it with a citrus or two to amplify the taste and flavour of it!

With that, I came home inspired to test out the extend of its flavour. I had an experimental plan to try and extract and infuse the flavours of the finger root rhizome and leaves into a protein that could take citrus hints- shrimp! Surprisingly, because of the nature of the marinade, it went so well with the sweetness of the yellow bell peppers that I had in my fridge.

I do hope you’ll be inspired to have a go at creating food from new ingredients just as I was.

Ingredients:

• 10 medium sized prawns cleaned and deveined
• 1 yellow capsicum/ mushroom/ cherry tomatoes/ onion cut into bite sized pieces

Marinade:

• 3 root gingers chopped up
• 2 cloves of garlic chopped
• Handful of cilantro chopped
• A few stalks of chives chopped
• Slice up 1-2 root ginger leaves
• Juice of 2 root fingers (pounded)
• Juice if 1/2 a lemon
• Some lemon zest
• Some olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Other tools

• Bamboo skewers soaked in water to Ensure it doesn’t burn

Steps:

1. Put the prawns and vegetables onto the skewers and allow them to marinate for at least 15 mins
2. Heat your pan and cook the skewers
3. Once you’ve flipped, drop a small amount of butter into the pan
4. Optional: You can reduce the rest of the juice reduce in the pan before drizzling it onto the skewers

Enjoy!

You can use any kinds of vegetables that you want but I will recommend quick cook ones so that it will have the same cook time as the shrimp. I love using yellow bell peppers because of the natural sweetness that balances with the salty and citrus from the shrimp.

You can also just do vegetable skewers with the same marinate and it will amazing :)