How to eat prawns

Prelude

We were in the kitchen. The kitchen I still think of as new although I think now it’s nearly been there longer than the previous one. But these moments must have been sometime between 2008 and 2011 as I know it was before I went travelling but the kitchen had been finished. The travelling following these moments with my mother in her kitchen becomes important later.

I am going to guess that it was a weekend because when else would we have been in the kitchen as the sun started to tick down in the sky. I have a vague idea that maybe my mother’s mother was there too as she so often was. But this third person lingers so much on the periphery as I try to call them up from my memory, I can’t quite grasp at them. I’d like to think it was her because I like to think we had more time together than we did.

My mother made herself a bowl of prawns. Large coral shelled crustaceans with black bead eyes and spindle legs thrown out in front of them. Imagine them all piled high. Or maybe they fitted nicely into the bowl. Maybe there were only five of them. The bowl she uses is one of the very oldest from my childhood. Small, wider at the brim than the base, a design of pink polka dots and a painted ribbon just under the inside rim. The bowls are used to this day, in the kitchen that’s not so new, they are used for the cat’s fish.

My mother’s kitchen is wide with huge glass bifold doors letting in the light from the garden. It’s on the corner of the house, which is an L shape. She designed it. It is perfect in my eyes. The worktop is silk Corian the colour of parchment and it seems so sweep beneath your hands. To sit at the breakfast bar your back is towards the garden and you face into the room. We always sit there, on the chairs she bought temporarily and never replaced. I am not sat next to her, even though I would like to be now I think about it. I am on the other side of the island. I am watching her.

She has walked her bowl of prawns over to take a seat. She has said nothing about them.

The prawns were from Waitrose, purchased because she ‘fancied them’ (my looking at her prompts this information from her) I suspect they were on offer, sweetening the result.

Step one-Pull off the head

As I have mentioned you can tell the head of a prawn because of those black bead eyes. I cannot tell you if that’s what the eyes look like underwater. I add this because you might not know that uncooked prawns look entirely different, I didn’t, not for a while.

The head will come away easily if your pinch either side of the eyes between your thumb and index finger. You will feel flesh beneath the shell, hold tight to that as you don’t want to eat its brain. Or the part of it that controls its body and instincts. I’m unable to comment on the sentience, self-awareness or neurological functions of crustaceans.

My mother’s hand makes this a split second’s work, her fingers working with surety. There is a wet crunching sound as shell and body pull away.

Once the head comes away place that to the side. Maybe don’t look into its eyes. Removing the head will reveal the centre of flesh (is flesh a term we use for Shellfish? -Option to research this later) within the shell casing of the body and the tail. When cooked properly the flesh will be the palest near white, pink, stronger veins of deeper pink will run over the outside where the shell was attached which you will discover when you complete step two.

Step two- Remove the shell

Use your two thumbs to split open the shell along the ridge at the top, think of it like the spine. You’ll need to push your thumbs into the prawn, but this is the most efficient way to reveal the part you can eat. The legs curled up into the body can make you think of something recoiling if you want to dwell on that idea.

My mother’s hands move with practised ease, she absent-mindedly licks at the tips of her fingers as they get coated in a layer of grease.

Step three- Pull the prawn from inside the shell

The prawn should lift from within the shell with a little encouragement. Pinch off the very end of the tail unless you feel so inclined to eat some shell. I don’t know why you would, but I’ve been told some people do so for the purposes of inclusion I am leaving it in. I’m trying to think if there is any nutritional logic to eating shell, but my mind is stuck on potato skins which is all to do with fibre content and I doubt shells can claim the same credentials.

Step four- Eat

My mother pops the prawn into her mouth. She discards the husk of its shell alongside the decapitated head. It takes seconds to eat a prawn. She must have noticed me watching her at this point realising I was observing the movements of her hands, the process of the meal. If we spoke about the way to eat prawns, I don’t recall. Sometimes I wish my memory is better than it is, and its pretty good. I wish I could record all the words she’s ever said to me and the words she will say. Even  the harsh words, the words she doesn’t mean to say. Human minds were not designed by human knowledge. We grow our brains from the very first cells to the endless synapses that make us whole. We grow with no knowledge of a loss to come so we don’t behave like something designed, just something human. We hold onto what we can.

I do recall her telling me the prawn in her hands is a girl. I ask how she knows and she shows me the roe. I have never seen roe before, the way the tiny spheres seem to glow with the depth of colour of the sun at sunset. They are grouped between the prawn’s legs up against its body to be protected. My mother takes her index finger and wiggles them free, I ask if people really eat them. She laughs at me and carries on without eating the roe. Later I remember what caviar is.

Years later

I’ve made a guess at the time that’s passed, but for the purposes of prose…

Some years later I order prawns on a beach restaurant in Malaysia. They are the largest I have ever seen. (Sorry to Waitrose) They were fished from the sea that day, we are treating ourselves to the BBQ section of the menu a last night decadence we can only just afford since we have weeks of travel ahead of us. I jokingly walk one of the four- trust me these things are basically lobsters you only need four- across my plate and say to my friend ‘he’s looking at you’. This is a spliced memory of my father walking a prawn out of his paella and saying the exact thing to me as a small child at a beach restaurant in Spain. My friend watches me as my hands move the way my mother’s did. Pulling the head, splitting the shell, pulling the prawn from the casing, pinching off the tail, eating within a few bites. She remarks on my casual ferocity given I don’t eat meat.

But in the backdrop of palms, white sands and a deep black sea hugging the sky I think of my mother in her kitchen. Eating prawns because she fancied them.