Showing posts with label prawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prawn. Show all posts

Sunday 11 October 2020

Keralan prawn curry

It's got coconut in
Annie I'm Not Your Daddy by Kid Creole and the Coconuts

Imagine you're Dr Who and you've jumped in the TARDIS and you're going back... back... back.... It's the 1970s. You step out of the TARDIS and head off for a posh dinner. You end up packed into a heaving working men's club for your meal, before a bitter, racist comedian in a frilly shirt starts making jokes with an oh, so funny cod-Jamaican accent (see example below). You know your main course can be only one thing. You know it's going to be chicken... in a basket! Yes, it's a roast or fried chicken portion with chips and possibly peas, but you know it's posh because it's not on a plate. It's only in a basket! I mean, it's a piece of bland, factory-farmed, sub-KFC hen (though KFC wasn't about much in the 70s, even in it's original incarnation of Kentucky Fried Chicken, at least not where I lived), it's a frozen chicken portion with frozen chips and frozen peas, but it's OK, because it's IN A FUCKING BASKET! Still, I suppose it could be worse. It could be cooked in hay, for fuck's sake. Yes, hay. Some well known, expensive, Michelin-starred chefs serve up food that's cooked in dry grass, because, like, it's really rustic. Why stop there? Stick in a bit of cowshit to give it that just made in the field flavour? Maybe serve it with a side of freshly culled, organic badger chips and a drizzle of incest jus for true authenticity.

Top club comic from back in the day, Bobby Chariot
(or alter-ego of Alexei Sayle)

Obviously, that's your main course. Your dessert will have to be Black Forest Gateau. It's like the worst dilemma for your average Europhobic gammon. I mean, it's a cake that originated in Germany, has a French name, and yet, it's the nostalgia crack cocaine that was the "classy" dessert of their youth, even if it's basically just a chocolate cake with cherry jam and whipped cream.

So we've covered main course and dessert, what's the starter going to be? Well, there can be only one. It's got to be prawn cocktail. A handful of tiny prawns embedded in a turd of cloying, pink seafood sauce shat upon a few scabby lettuce leaves, half a forced tomato (with all the flavour of a raw potato), and a couple of slices of cucumber. This was most people's only exposure to the prawn or shrimp when I grew up. I mean, you could get prawn balls at your local Chinese takeaway, but that was foreign muck again. Besides, who wants to eat them weird pink cockroachy things from the sea?

The Three Horsemen of the 70s Food Apocalypse
(All that's missing is Famine, though after looking at this lot, Famine is probably not sounding too bad)

Sources: https://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_britain/classic_recipes/prawn_cocktail.html
https://violetbakes.wordpress.com/category/chicken-in-a-basket-recipe/
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/if-you-grew-70s-you-ll-definitely-remember-these-foods-slideshow/slide-2

We're much more urbane now, though. You can even buy raw, frozen prawns from Farmfoods, which is a retailer only one step up from a shop selling secondhand food. Indeed, it was raw, frozen prawns I used for this dish, allowing them to defrost before cooking them then giving them a rinse under the tap. Because it's from the southern part of the Sub-Continent, this curry is quite different to the other Indian dishes I've posted before as it's missing most of the spice you'd normally associate with curry (particularly cumin and coriander), but the fenugreek gives it a proper curry flavour, as do the curry leaves. I muse on what does and doesn't make a curry here. This version of a curry is very much Indian, but with a tropical twist from the coconut, gaining something from Malaysian or Thai cuisine in character.

In researching this recipe I discovered that there are two main types of eating prawns: large, warm water prawns (or king prawns) and cold water prawns. Cold water, Atlantic prawns are caught by trawling and are cooked on landing which means they can't usually be bought raw. They taste quite good, but their flavour is quite strong (and they hold a lot of water) which means that they don't really work in a lot of recipes where you have to cook the prawns . This is the type of prawn usually used in prawn cocktail. On the other hand, warm water prawns are farmed, mainly in tropical Asia, and can be bought raw so are much better for cooking with. They taste good too, and don't get too mushy from added water, so tend to be plump, firm and juicy when cooked.There are arguments about the impact of prawn farming on the environment but if managed properly this can be minimised.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes

 INGREDIENTS
2 shallots, roughly chopped
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
1 piece of ginger (approximately thumb-sized)
2 fat cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
Small piece of fresh turmeric, roughly chopped (around 2 cm in length)
Juice of a lime
1 tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
2 cloves
2 green cardamom pods
½ star anise
½ tsp ground black pepper
½tsp salt
Handful of curry leaves (around 20)
200ml coconut milk (half a 400ml can)
100g green beans, topped, tailed and cut into 4cm pieces
120g fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1tsp sugar
250g raw peeled prawns

L
Spices
clockwise from top: salt, turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, anise, mustrad seeds, fenugreek seeds with curry leaves in teh centre

RECIPE
Put the shallots, chillies, ginger, garlic, turmeric and lime juice into a hand blender and make into a paste.

Heat the vegetable oil to a heavy based pan and add the spices, including the curry leaves and fry for a minute or so. The seeds and leaves should start to pop.

Spoon in the paste and cook through, stirring constantly so it doesn't catch on the base of the pan (about 10-15 minutes, when the paste starts to take on some colour).

Pour in the coconut milk and add the tomatoes and sugar, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until the beans are tender.

Add the prawns and allow them to braise in the coconut sauce until cooked (they will change colour from grey to reddish when cooked and shouldn't take much more than a couple of minutes)

In the pot
Serve up with rice and maybe a vegetable curry on the side.

Served up with plain boiled rice and a squash curry

NOTES
It's rare I can cook a dish with coconut as part of the base because Mrs Sweary is not a fan of coconutty sauces. This example, however, has a relatively small amount of coconut milk, so the flavour is not overwhelming. Mrs Sweary actually liked this.

When I was cooking the sauce, I tasted it and couldn't help thinking something was missing. I added the prawns and it turned out that they actually were the missing ingredient. 

Fresh turmeric (haldi) looks like ginger, but is a vivid yellow colour when you cut into it. You can find it in Asian grocers, but if you can't get it, use a teaspoon of dried turmeric.

Curry leaves are quite unique and you can't really substitute their distinctive flavour. If you can't find them, add a bay leaf and more fenugreek seeds.

That sickly prawn cocktail was the only exposure to prawns that the majority of the British public had in those dim and distant times, when they can be a lovely ingredient, is a tragedy. Plump, juicy and sweet and they work really well in spicy dishes, like some Chinese or curries like this one, or Mediterranean cuisine like Spanish gambas pil pil or paella.

There aren't many references to prawns in popular culture. The only one I could think about was Scampi the Prawn in the 79s kids' programme, Fingerbobs. I didn't mention it because, well, I've done way too many references to 50 year old TV shows of late, so I'll keep that one for another time I do a prawn recipe. Do remember, however, if you are going to Fingerbobs, get their consent first.

Whilst prawn reference are pretty thin on the geround, I could get a few references to coconut, such as Kide Creole's at the top of the page and this little gem from the Avalanches. This boy certainly needs therapy.

More Coconut references, but a better song
Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches


Saturday 18 October 2014

Pineapple fried rice

Fucking grass! It's everywhere. You get it growing up through the cracks in your drive, sprouting in your flower beds and you keep having to mow the fucker every few days in the summer. Fucking annoying. On the other hand, grass also provides most of the bulk calorific content for the diet of the majority of the human race. Wheat, barley, maize, oats, rye and especially rice all come from types of grass. Some people even drink grass juice, but they are fucking idiots falling for psuedoscientific bullshit. Well, that, or they are channeling Ermintrude from the Magic Roundabout.

Rice has been the major food source of a huge proportion of the world's population over the last few thousands of years. However, in the 1970s, rice in the house I grew up in was always bland American long grain rice from some company like Uncle Ben or Bachelors. By God, it was dull, tasteless and generally quit shit. It was akin to eating oily polystyrene chips. However, trust my parents to make a bland thing truly bad, they developed a concoction (I hesitate to call it a recipe) that had crap like chopped spam in it which tasted like death probably feels. I last had it maybe 35 years ago but it took until about 2006 until it stopped repeating on me whenever I burped. This almost put me off rice for ever. Then, later in life, I tried new varieties of rice. Rice that had taste and texture and was made into recipes containing any meat that you needed a tin opener to access. Pilau rice in Indian restaurants, egg fried rice in Chinese. Later on it was risotto, pilaf and paella. Truth be told, rice is a fantastic accompaniment to the right dish, as long as it's a decent quality rice used to start with. This means basmati for a curry or Thai jasmine rice for anything east of India.

Now, anyone reading my blog may have realised that I'm not especially arsed about how a dish looks. However, this recipe looks fucking great, served up in half a pineapple.

INGREDIENTS

200g rice
2 tbsp vegetable oil (not olive, it's too strongly flavoured)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 spring onions
5 large, raw prawns, chopped
1 pineapple, halved and flesh scooped out and chopped finely
1 egg, beaten
black pepper
splash of light soy sauce

RECIPE
Put the rice in a pan of water and bring it to the boil. Boil it for about 12-15 minutes (it needs to e firm or, if you're a foodie wanker, al dente). Drain it in a sieve and keep it on the side.

Add the oil to a wok (or frying pan if you prefer, it tastes the same). Put on the heat and once the oil is hot add the garlic and fry for a minute. Add the prawns and the spring onion for about another minute (the raw prawn should change colour to a nice pink). Add the chopped pineapple then throw in the egg and stir it around so it makes a sort of scrambled mess with the other ingredients. Return the rice to the pan and stir it all up so everything gets mixed. Add the black pepper and the soy sauce and continue to mix until it's a consistent colour. Take the rice out of the pan and onto a plate it's almost time to serve it.

A few minutes before you want to serve dinner, put the oven on at 170°. When it's warm, remove the rice from the pan and pile it into the empty half pineapple. Cover the rice with foil and put the whole lot in the oven in an oven-proof dish. Heat it for 10-15 minutes.Take it out, remove the foil and serve.
This is a fantastic accompaniment to my baked fish recipe or anything vaguely East/southeast Asian.


NOTES
This is about as fucking close as you will get to a wanky dinner party dish in this blog. To be fair, if you made it this far, you probably realise that isn't really my style. Even I, though, have to admit that this does look quite impressive brought to the table in the pineapple. In fact you might find that your guests apparently gasp at the spectacle, but you can guarantee they are thinking "You pretentious fucking twat!". However, if they aren't, and they actually are genuinely impressed by some rice in half a pineapple you need to get new friends since, if you're like me, you're only serving it like that because it saves on the washing up.

Rice is a great foodstuff: cheap, fairly easy to cook and quick to prepare. However, as a rule of thumb, avoid buying the shit they sell in the supermarket in 500g or 1kg packets. Either it's going to be cheap, which will mean it's of crap quality (see above about American long grain rice), or else it's grossly overpriced. The best place to buy rice is a Chinese or other Asian supermarket, and in as big a pack as you can afford/store. It costs more to buy the pack but per kg it's much cheaper. Also, it lasts for ages. I am a bit of a foodie wanker, but I buy Thai fragrant rice by the 5kg sack. It's better quality, costs about a third of the price per kg as a small pack in Tesco's and lasts for literally months. Having said this, the local demographic in your area may dictate that your local supermarket does stock decent Asian rice in big quantities, so have a look.

Tim Rice, you got away without being in the blog... this time