Try Making Mr Ji’s Delightful Take On A Taiwanese Street Food Classic At Home

Ana Gonçalves and Zijun Meng met in 2009 at The Loft Project by Nuno Mendes, going onto open the Michelin-starred Viajante, working with Mendes for over five years including time spent at the Corner Room and Chiltern Firehouse. In the summer of 2015, TĀTĀ Eatery, their brainchild was born, a nomadic pop-up series celebrating quality produce and powerful flavour combinations. In 2018 their legendary Iberian Katsu Sando came to life, and a year later Ana and Meng partnered up with Alex Kratena and Monica Berg for the opening of Tayēr+Elementary, taking responsibility for creating the food menu. Their most recent project, Mr Ji, an Asian eatery and bar in the heart of Soho, with a menu centred on small dishes and cocktails, launched earlier this year. Through its imaginative culinary offering and on-going exhibition series, Mr Ji explores the infinite possibilities presented by the intersection between art and food, opening a new show with Chinese photographer Wang Wei. To mark the occasion, Ana and Meng share with Something Curated a special recipe for their delightful creation, ‘Prawn in Box.’

MR JI’S ‘PRAWN IN BOX’

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Serves 2

This recipe is inspired by the very popular street food snack in Taipei, the coffin bread. Our version is made with brioche and stuffed with a velvety bechamel, prawn and sweet corn and topped with freshly grated parmesan and a squeeze of lemon.

You will have to prepare the brioche box, a bechamel sauce, then your prawn and sweet corn mix to make the stuffing.

FOR THIS RECIPE YOU WILL NEED

• Stove
• Cooking pot
• Spatula
• Scale / Sieve
• Whisk

BECHAMEL SAUCE

• 15g butter unsalted
• 15g all-purpose flour
• 330g milk
• 5.4g Hondashi
• 3g Parmesan skin
• 3g minced garlic
• 15g onions
• 1 pinch white pepper
• 1 pinch Maldon salt

Make a milk infusion by adding milk, onion, Parmesan, Hondashi, garlic, salt and pepper to a pot. Bring to the simmer and set aside to infuse for at least 30 minutes.

Strain the infusion through a sieve and reserve.

Make a roux by melting the butter in a pot, add the flour and with a spatula keep stirring to cook out the flour until it is golden brown and with a nutty fragrance.

Add milk to the roux in 4 stages, bringing the mixture to a boil before adding the milk to the next stage, constantly whisking until the mix is smooth. Reserve.

PRAWN MIX

• 5 king prawns shelled
• 1 tbls frozen sweet corn
• 30g bechamel sauce

Cut the prawns into small pieces, mix with sweet corn and add to a pan with the bechamel. Bring to a simmer until the prawns are cooked. Reserve until you have the brioche ready to fill.

BRIOCHE

• 1 brioche loaf

Portion the bread by cutting 4cm thick slices, cut all the crusts off and cut the bread again in the middle to make a cuboid.

Fry the bread, just before serving, at 190°C. Roll it around to make sure it is golden brown all around, for around 45 seconds. Drain it well and reserve.

With scissors cut inside the edge to remove the centre of the bread, pull out the interior making sure not to poke through the sides.

TO SERVE

• 2 prawn boxes
• Prawn mix
• 20g Parmesan
• 2 lemon wedge

Reheat the prawn mix and spoon it into the 2 bread boxes, all the way to the top.

Freshly grate the Parmesan on top of each box and serve with a wedge of lemon.



Feature image: Artwork by Wang Wei. Courtesy the artist and Mr Ji.