I love seafood and amongst the easiest and least messiest sea-foody things to cook are prawns. So it goes without saying that this was my go-to prawn curry dish and I make it almost every time I have a seafood craving. The recipe is quite a versatile one; this also works with squid.
I suspect it’d also work well with fish, but I’ll tell you about that once I actually try it. Once you attempt this, it’ll probably only take you about 30 minutes to put the whole thing together. A little longer perhaps if you squeeze out the coconut milk yourself (I do this almost every time, except when I’m in a tearing hurry).
You can actually put it together even faster if you use a hand blender. Dice the onions and tomatoes up roughly and blend them up to a purée (separately of course) before cooking them. The curry you see up there in the picture was made this way.
This recipe first appeared here, on my food-blogger friend Jyotika’s website, at one of the first house parties/banquets I hosted at home.
If you’re trying this with squid, cut the squid into rings and cook for three minutes (make sure the squid is at room temperature so that it cooks evenly).
The Recipe
Ingredients
100-200 gms fresh, deveined prawns
1 large onion
1 large tomato
1-2 green chillies (again, as per spice threshold) cut into three pieces and slit along its length
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1½ teaspoons of ginger garlic paste
100 ml coconut milk
2 tablespoons cooking oil (olive or sunflower)
Salt to taste
For the masala
2 teaspoons coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
Method
- Sauté the onions and chillies in oil, till tender and translucent. Add the masala powders and cook till the aroma of the spices fill the kitchen (taking care not to burn it).
- Add the tomatoes and stir till cooked. Dissolve the tamarind paste in half a cup of boiling hot water and stir it into the onions and tomatoes.
- Let it simmer till it thickens a bit. Add the coconut milk and stir. Let this simmer for ten minutes and add the prawns.
- If you like the prawns tender, cook for 2½ minutes. If you want them well done, and not hard, cook for 3½ minutes.
- Add salt to taste and serve.
