Whipped up in less than 20 minutes with almost no cooking at all, this colourful dish is both fun and easy to make. You can easily swap around the ingredients according to your preferences or what you have available in your pantry or fridge.

Servings: 2 main portions or 6 starter/tapas portions (makes 6 tacos)
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

For the Prawns and Tacos

• 10-12 king prawns (shelled, deveined, uncooked) OR 1.5 cups frozen shrimp or prawn (pre-cooked shelled, defrosted in fridge overnight*) OR 3 medium sized ready battered fish fillets (cooked as per usual)
• Salt and pepper
• 6-8 tacos (hard-shell or soft-shell, to your liking)
• 1 lime (plus 1 extra for garnish)
• 1 teaspoon of chopped chillies (optional)

For the salsa

• 8-10 cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
• 0.5 red/yellow/orange bell pepper, finely diced
• 0.5 small tin sweet corn, drained
• 0.5 small red onion, finely diced OR 1-2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 0.5-1 mango, cubed (if you don’t have mango; pineapple or orange chunks work just as well)
• 1 small chilli, finely chopped (Retain the seeds if you like that extra kick of heat!)
• 1 avocado, chopped into 1 cm chunks
• 1 lime
• 1 large bunch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped (if you don’t like coriander/can’t find it, you can substitute with a combination of fresh mint and parsley)
• salt and pepper for seasoning

Method:

1. Make sure you’ve got all the ingredients prepared and out of the fridge. If using the battered fish, cook as per usual.
2. To make the salsa, add all ingredients to a medium sized bowl. Add the juice and zest of one lime and season with salt and pepper. Mix gently, careful not to mash the avocado. 
3. If you’re using fresh uncooked prawns, grill over a high heat with a splash of oil until cooked – approximately 1.5 minutes on each side. If using pre-cooked shrimps/prawns just transfer them to a nice serving bowl. If you’re using fish, just cut into 2cm chunks.
4. Dress the prawns/shrimps/fish with the zest and juice of 1 lime, some chopped chilli (optional) and salt and pepper.
5. Warm up the tacos according to packet instructions
6. Serve all your finished components on a board with lime wedges and extra coriander for garnish. Enjoy.

Notes:

Do not thaw pre-cooked shrimp at room temperature, and this can promote growth of harmful bacteria and illness. This is best done overnight in the fridge. If you have to speed up the process (because you forgot to take them out), this can be done by running the frozen shrimps under running cold tap water. The pre-cooked shrimps/prawns are, as the name suggests already cooked. There is no need to cook them. If anything, cooking tends to makes them rubbery and bland. However, if you must, then add to a screaming hot pan for less than 40 seconds and remove immediately.

As you can see, the ingredients list for the salsa is pretty flexible. I tend to just open the fridge and use whatever I can find. Some fresh radishes lying around in the fridge? Finely slice up and add to your salsa. Some whole corn on the cob? Give it some charring and then add the kernels instead of the canned corn. Don’t have an avocado? – don’t worry it’ll still be fine. Just add some extra corn or bell peppers. Don’t have fresh chilli? Add some chilli flakes. Want something more filling? Add some black beans!

If you’re making the salsa ahead of time, I would recommend following the same steps but omitting the avocado, salt and pepper. This is to prevent the avocado from going black and the other components of the salsa from wilting. Add the avocado, salt and pepper at the last moment just prior to serving.

Serving more people? Just double the recipe. 🙂

Don’t like prawns? You can easily serve the tacos using battered fish fillets/fingers instead. It adds a delicious crunch. If you like that idea, but still like prawn, you could also try store bought tempura prawn.