It wouldn't be summer without these delicious crustaceans.
It is hot and humid, which is the perfect excuse to just laze around on the deck eating a large paper cone of perfectly steamed prawns with lemon wedges and a fingerbowl handy.
Just think about how many prawns are being nibbled right now, grilled on the barbie or made
into a real flash Harry cocktail with Mary Rose sauce.
A couple of years ago chefs at London's Fishmongers' Hall made a successful bid to create the world's largest prawn cocktail, consisting of 45kg of prawns, piled into a 1.5m-high champagne glass with 100 shredded lettuces, 12.5 litres of ketchup whisked into mayonnaise with one-and-a-half bottles of worcestershire sauce and just under a full bottle of tabasco.
It took three people to make and it was served to 350 guests at a buffet dinner.
The history of the prawn cocktail begins in the late-19th century in the United States when it became a popular appetiser. It was made with shrimps and served in small cups. It wasn't until the Prohibition era that the dish was served in stemware.
So is a shrimp the same as a prawn? Not quite. It's all to do with gill structure rather than size. And they have a subtly different flavour.
The saltwater crustaceans known as shrimps are found in both warm and cold water, and are farmed intensively in the US.
A prawn is a crustacean that more closely resembles a miniature crayfish and has sweet, succulent flesh. In Europe they are known as langoustine - or scampi in Italy.
There are hundreds of different prawn varieties, ranging from tiny specimens used for making stinky prawn paste to giants the size of small lobsters.
Tiger prawns are pale brown to blue-green with distinct grey, blue or black stripes. King prawns have a cream to light-brown body and are generally larger than tiger prawns. Banana prawns, caught by trawlers off northern Australia, are translucent yellow with tiny dark spots.
Endeavour prawns have a pale-brown to pink body with either a bright blue or bright red edge to their tail, and vannamei prawns are a small farmed prawn from Southeast Asia.
The most important thing about preparing prawns is to remove the intestinal tract. Make a small incision along the top of the prawn and use a toothpick to lever the tract out.
Thawing frozen prawns in a salad spinner in the refrigerator overnight will allow the prawns to sit up out of the sticky liquid.
As for my personal favourites, I recommend Crystal Bay prawns from far north Queensland. They have a superior flavour and, when poached in a court bouillon or lightly steamed, the shells turn baby pink and the meat sweet and firm.
You simply can't go through a Kiwi summer without peeling a wine cooler full of prawns with a few mates.
Prawn and goat's cheese agnoletti
Malaysian prawn salad
