Dublin Bay Prawns with Garlic Butter

The story

Dublin Bay prawns are not prawns at all but Nephrops norvegicus, the slim orange-pink lobster that much of Europe knows as langoustine and Italy as scampi. Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1758 from Norwegian waters. The Irish name comes from Dublin, where they were first regularly landed. Trawlers working the northern Irish Sea caught the little lobsters as unwanted bycatch, and crews unloaded them at sea in Dublin Bay for sale to street vendors before landing their official catch in the harbor; the name is a 19th-century holdover. In the 1950s the tails were breaded, deep-fried and served with tartare sauce as scampi, and prawn cocktails were the fashion of the 1970s. The prawns are not actually fished in Dublin Bay today. Boats from Howth trawl far out in the Irish Sea, and the fishing village has held a Dublin Bay Prawn Festival in March. Irish cooks still treat them simply: Bord Bia, the Irish food board, fries the peeled tails in butter and garlic for a minute or so on each side and finishes them with lemon. Serve them as soon as they leave the pan, with brown bread for the butter and a glass of dry white wine such as Muscadet or Chablis.