Mr. Cold & Mrs. Cough visited us last week. Since they are very irritating guests, we weren’t very happy to welcome them. But then, my husband always wants to play the role of a good host. So they spent most of their time with him. After one week of entertaining them with a full course of Augementino Antibiotico and a generous serving of Coughino Syrupo, he was bored! He decided to ditch them with his ‘gotta lot to do’ signature thinking. And that’s how I ended up with the responsibility of entertaining them! Btw, did I tell you, this time also they didn’t forget to bring some awful gifts… bags full of sleepless nights and dizzy days!
The grapevine says that a new couple is checking out places in our neighborhood. The worst part is they are the best buddies of our guests, Mr. Sandstorm and Mrs. Finedust. It seems that they are very nosy people who are just waiting for a chance to get into your house. All in all, it’s a tiring time for me. I’m pissed off with our guests and I’m expressing it in every way I could and I also made it clear to them that unlike my husband I’m not planning to prepare any full course meal for them. Hopefully, they will get my hint and leave soon.
Anyways, we’ll ditch them for the time being and get into our business….cooking. I wanted a prawns curry with gravy and found this. Now… I’m not sure about the roots of this curry. At my place, we don’t use ‘valanpuli’ (tamarind) in fish curry preparations, ‘kudampuli’ (kokum) rules the fish recipes. We use valan puli mainly in veg dishes like sambar & theeyal. However I was happy that I tried this recipe. It definitely was a new taste but a welcoming one! I got this recipe from Lakshmi Nair’s cookery book, but I also saw a similar recipe in “50 Great Curries of India” by Camelia Punjabi under the name Malabar Prawns Curry. If you’ve any idea about the origins of this curry, please do share it here.
I need to confess one more thing… I took this picture sometime back, wasn’t very happy with it. But now I don’t feel like taking the picture again :( These days I’m developing a little bit of aversion towards photography. It’s not like I love it in the first place, I enjoy it at times but not always. I do hope to update this with new picture sometime soon…
So shall we proceed to the recipe?
- Cleaned prawns – 250 gm
- Onion – 2 medium, finely sliced
- Ginger & Garlic – finely chopped, ½ – ¾ tbsp
- Tomato – 1 medium, sliced
- Thick Tamarind Pulp – 1 tbsp
- Thick coconut milk – 1 – 1½ cups
- Curry leaves
- Oil
- Salt
- Chilly powder – 2 tsp
- Pepper powder – ½ tsp
- Jeera – ¼ tsp
- Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
- Grind together the ingredients listed under ‘to grind’ to a fine paste using ½ tbsp water.
- Heat oil in a pan and add finely sliced onions, chopped ginger & garlic. Cook it till the onions become soft. Add the ground paste to this and fry for a few minutes, till the oil starts appearing. Add the sliced tomatoes & tamarind pulp to this and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add coconut milk & salt to this. Let it boil. Add cleaned prawns, & curry leaves. Cook till the prawns are done and the gravy is thick.
- Serve hot with rice.
