Contemporary Singaporean Tze Char classic, Cereal Prawn, might just be the quintessential culinary analogy for the Singapore story:

It's a prime exemplar of a melting pot dish with its various components: butter, chilli padi, and curry leaf characteristic of our flagship cuisines and cultures. Not to mention its taste, earnest and flavorsome, it endures as a barrage of spice, savory, and sweet; a robust showing of characteristics akin to a spirited but warm people. It’s no wonder then that it remains a favorite amongst Singaporeans from all walks of life.

This rojak of ingredients, tastes, and its diners therefore marks a uniquely Singaporean coming together to create an identity, greater by far, than the sum of its parts. We identify with this crowd-pleaser so much that we just had to feature our rendition, Golden Cereal Ebi Pops, as our National Day recipe, albeit with a few cheeky innovations of our own to make it kid friendly, healthier, and more fun to cook/ eat.

Why Balls? The novel globular presentation in our version allows diners to bypass having to peel prawns during consumption, making this a great fuss free dish for messy kids! The chopped prawn is balled and cooked using the BRUNO Takoyaki attachment, a process utilizing a lot less oil than deep frying as is required in traditional versions of the recipe. This results in a cleaner cook, and a less oily, healthier meal that's markedly more fun too!

Delving into the details

Prawn

• For this recipe, the prawn should be shelled, deveined and chopped making this a great way to utilize that bag of frozen prawn meat which may be sitting in your freezer. 
• Needless to say however, peeling and prepping fresh prawn makes for higher caliber prawn balls. We like Ang Kar (Red Leg prawn) for this recipe as its bouncy texture nicely contrasts the crunchy components of this dish. 

Cereal

• As is typical for cereal prawn this recipe calls specifically for Nestum instant cereal, but in a pinch, one may substitute this with unsweetened cornflakes roughly pounded to break them into smaller pieces.  
• Each ball is crumbed directly in the cereal mix for maximum cereal crunch! We recommend using your Ceramic Coated Pot for breading, and reserving the leftovers for stir frying later for less clean up and food waste.

Chilli

• While chilli padi is a chief component of this stir fry, do adjust the amounts with your audience in mind — consider omitting it completely for service to young children. Otherwise, we’ve found 2 chilli fruits to be the perfect amount for a mild yet unmistakably present spicy kick!

Recipe (makes 16 pops) 

Steps

Rolling

1. Season chopped prawn flesh with ¼ tsp salt and ½ tsp sugar.
2. Roll prawn meat into 16 golf ball sized spheres (~4 cm in diameter).
3. Mix the instant cereal, milk powder, as well as the remaining salt and sugar together in your BRUNO Ceramic Coated Pot. 

Breading

1. First coat each prawn pop by rolling it in corn flour.
2. Dip your flour coated sphere in beaten egg. 
3. Finally, roll each ball in the cereal mix which should readily adhere to its surface.
4. Repeat this process, till all pops have been coated. Set aside remaining cereal mix for later use.

Frying

1. Prep your BRUNO Hotplate with the Takoyaki Plate, set the heat lever to LOW, and leave for 1 minute to heat up. While waiting, fill each of the center 16 divots with vegetable oil up to ¼ of their depth.
2. Plop 1 prawn pop into each of the oiled divots and let cook for 7 minutes.
3. Turn each ball with Takoyaki sticks can cook for another 7 minutes or until all surface area golden and cooked, periodically swap pops’ divots around to ensure even cooking. 
4. Remove cooked prawn pops and set aside for later. 

Stir fry

1. Set the same Ceramic Coated Pot used for breading into the BRUNO hotplate, and with a spatula, shovel the leftover cereal mix to the sides of the pot. 
2. Add butter, curry leaves, and chilli padi to the bare center of the pan and set the heat leaver to midway between LOW - MED. 
3. As soon as the butter begins to froth, stir fry the aromatics with a spatula, gradually incorporating the cereal into the mixture. Mix this for 1 minute.  
4. Add cooked prawn pops to the pot and stir vigorously for another minute to prevent it from burning. Turn off the heat and scoop finished dish onto a large serving plate.