#ewew cooks XO Sauce Stir-Fried Prawns with Sugar Snap Peas

After making XO Fried Rice with the jar of Lee Kum Kee XO sauce my sister gifted me some time back, I found that there was still some left over when I rummaged through my fridge one day.

So I thought I'd finish off whatever that was left by making XO Sauce Stir-Fried Prawns with Sugar Snap Peas.  Since it's a pretty easy dish to pull off, I didn't follow any recipe I saw online as I wanted to keep it simple.

Ingredients:

15 medium-sized prawns
15 sugar snap peas
4 shallots, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp XO sauce

Marinade (for the prawns)
1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Preparation:

Prep the prawns by trimming the heads and legs, deshelling the body (but leave the tail intact) and devein.  I decided to deshell only the body of the prawn as I'm a sucker for prawn heads (and I mean that literally as in I like to suck prawn heads!).  You can choose to remove both the heads and tails if you're too lazy to deal with any prawn shells.  Marinade the prawns and leave it in the refrigerator until you're ready to cook.

For the sugar snap peas, prepare them by removing the stem ends and the string from each sugar snap pea.

Method:

Blanch the sugar snap peas in salted boiling water for just one minute.  Remove and plunge them into an ice bath.  This will keep them crunchy and beautifully green.

Put 3 - 4 tbsp of oil into a small pan and fry the prawns.  As soon as the prawns change colour, remove them onto a plate.  It's ok if they're slightly undercooked at this point as they'd be stir-fried again.

With the remaining oil in the pan, fry the aromatics consisting of shallots and garlic.  Add in the finely chopped shallots first and fry till translucent and slightly caramelised before adding the minced garlic (there should be some remnants of garlic left over after removing the prawns).

Once the garlic is golden, add in two heaped teaspoons of XO sauce and stir to combine.

Dump the prawns back into the mix and stir-fry for another minute or two until prawns are fully cooked.

Finally, throw in the sugar snap peas, give it a quick toss and dish up.

And my XO Sauce Stir-Fried Prawns with Sugar Snap Peas is done :)

The prawns, coated in XO sauce, were savoury with umami flavours of dried scallops, dried shrimps, chillies, shallots, garlic and spices, and the sugar snap peas were crunchy to the bite. ^o^  Some might feel the XO sauce isn't savoury enough, so feel free to add more or add a pinch of salt if you like it saltier.

The prawns were firm and fresh, but not all were super fresh, so some of the prawn heads fell off during the stir-frying process but that didn't affect my sucking of the prawn heads one bit (where all the flavours congregate)...muahahahaha! :D 

You can choose to drizzle some dark soy for a bit more colour on the prawns.  If you have a jar of unfinished XO sauce in your fridge, this is a fabulous (and simple) recipe to do (it's not like you have to cook the XO sauce from scratch)....hehe! ^_~

This XO Sauce Stir-Fried Prawns with Sugar Snap Peas actually makes a wonderful one-dish meal (with rice) on days when you want to keep it simple since it combines a protein and a vegetable. ^.^

Serves 2 - 3 (as one of the dishes with rice) or as a single-dish meal (with rice) for one