Honey Walnut Prawns & Spicy Green Beans

When Dan & I first moved in together to an apartment on Capitol Hill, we fell in love with the Honey Walnut Prawns from the only Chinese Restaurant we could find that delivered - Broadway Wok & Grill. Their food was great, but it was the Honey Walnut Prawns (and quick, friendly service) that kept us calling. Sadly, they closed, but we've since moved to Beacon Hill, where we found Golden Daisy Garden could support our Walnut Prawns delivery habit.

But much like the drug addict who decides to 'grow his own', we decided to try our hand at making our favorite dish from scratch. We just didn't know how 'from scratch' it was going to be.

The process seemed simple enough. Just 3 components to make and then combine: the prawns, the walnuts, and the sauce. Plus rice, and for us, some green beans. But it was more involved than I anticipated, with the walnuts taking two 10 minute baths in boiling water before being drizzled with honey and then fried and cooled. The prawns just got coated in a egg/cornstarch batter and fried at the last minute. But the kicker was the sauce, of all things. Three simple ingredients, and we happened to be out of the main one: Mayo. But since the batter was made with egg whites, we had egg yolks sitting around, and lemon juice, and oil, and salt & water, so we busted out our copy of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio and literally whipped up our own mayo - trading off who whipped and who drizzled oil when our arms got tired. After a day of working in the yard, we were already beat - so it took a lot of turns to get our mayo, but it was worth it. The dish turned out just like we remembered it, or maybe even a little better

Unfortunately, the spicy green beans Dan made while I was frying shrimp didn't make the photo - because both our cameras had dead batteries and I was a little frantic trying to figure out how to get shots, thus forgetting to plate the green beans before I snapped a couple photos with my crappy cell phone.

Honey Walnut Prawns
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups oil
1 lb jumbo shrimp, peeled & deveined
1/2 cup cornstarch
3 egg whites
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbspn mayonnaise
1 Tbspn lemon juice (or white vinegar)
1 Tbspn sweetened condensed milk

Boil walnuts in 5 cups of water for 10 minutes. Drain. Place walnuts & sugar in a quart of boiling water, and boil for 10 minutes. Drain. Coat walnuts with honey. Heat 2 cups of oil until almost smoking, then fry walnuts until they are shiny and brown, about 5-8 minutes. Remove and place on a cookie sheet to cool. Mix cornstarch and egg whites together to form a thick, sticky mixture. Mix in shrimp and set aside. Mix mayonnaise, lemon juice, and condensed milk in a medium bowl until smooth. Heat 1/2 cup oil and deep fry shrimp until golden. Drain shrimp and then fold into mayonnaise sauce.

(Recipe from Recipezaar, because, amazingly, I don't have a good Chinese Food cookbook.)