Prawns & Panna Cotta


This was my attempt at making Brent Owens‘, as it turns out, incredibly delicious Thai Red Prawns with Coconut Lemongrass Panna Cotta. Only difference was I played with quantities a little since I was only cooking for 2 whereas the original recipe is set for 4 serves. Thanks Brent & MasterChef Australia!

I have been attempting recipes for the longest time but have only recently worked out a little prep process. Get all the ingredients out first, then measure them all out and have them ready to go as you need them. Just makes the actual cooking so much more enjoyable. Of course hunting for ingredients in our chaos of a kitchen leads to some edgy moments with the wife, but she lets it pass, most of the time, since shes got her eye on the final prize – lipsmacking food!

Ok so without much further ado, lets dive right in shall we?

Panna Cotta looks simple enough but has it’s little idiosyncrasies. I followed the directions on the recipe, did a little digging around the internet to find the time required to set the panna cotta and just went for it. Lets say for a first attempt, it was fairly good but has room for improvement to get it just right. The biggest learning from this was to ensure that if the recipe asks for a particular grade of any ingredient, that’s what should be used!

Coconut milk being heated with lemon grass for the Panna Cotta



The rest of the ingredients were easy enough, though the trick was in the timing of the prepping and cooking for plating. My prep plan worked wonders and the cooking was smooth and plating looked fairly decent – almost matched the original wot? I used the fresh frozen XXL Prawns from Fishvish.

The ingredients for the main paste.


This is the area that I think needs a little more work – small quantities do not work well in a food processor! The paste wasn’t the consistency that was needed though the flavour was there. Just powered through.

Got the Mango cheeks on the grill, the prawns followed and this is what Pooja and I ended up eating.


Yes the plate is all wrong but its the only one I had handy. If we keep this MasterChef recipe trials up, we’re going to have to get a lot more crockery!

There are some really awesome recipes by contestants on MasterChef Australia that can be fairly easily replicated. More so because a lot the ingredients are now available to us. If not, substitutes are available and they work really well too. Ok so maybe some techniques maybe we can’t use if we don’t have a sous-vide machine or a smoking gun or a foam container, but there are so many more that we can do. Happy cooking people!


Bijal Patel
Co-Founder Fishvish
Hardcore food junkie, 
loves to cook for his wife.

Leave a Comment