Coconut milk and the toasty savour of roasted prawns, lifted by the tartness of sudachi.
SPICE CURRY SPICE PACK (Spice Curry Spice Pack Symphony No.2 / SN2) makes this Coconut Milk Prawn and Sudachi Curry.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- SN2 / starter spices (the bag of whole spices): 1 bag
- SN2 / powder spices (the bag of ground spices): 1 bag
- Canned tomatoes (whole): 400g
- Onion: 1
- Garlic: 10g grated (roughly 1–2 cloves)
- Ginger: 10g grated
- Prawns (head-on, medium): 5
- Coconut milk: 200g
- Sudachi (a small, tart Japanese citrus): 2
- Sugar: 2 tsp
- Salt: 1 tsp
- Nam pla (Thai fish sauce): 1 tbsp (soy sauce also works)
- White sesame oil: 3 tbsp (use whichever oil you prefer)
| Swap the sugar for 1 tbsp of marmalade and it is just as good. |
Preparation
- Pull the heads and shells off the prawns, and rub the bodies with sake.
- Cut the onion into wedges.
- Slice as many rounds of sudachi as you need to garnish at the end; squeeze the juice from the rest and discard only the seeds.
Making the prawn paste
- Spread the shells you removed on aluminium foil and roast them in a toaster oven until they are browned and crisp.
- Blend the roasted shells together with the coconut milk: 200g into a paste.
| This paste is the one step that makes the recipe a little demanding. You need a blender, and it takes a bit of work, but the flavour it gives back is worth it, so do give it a try. |
Method
- Pour the white sesame oil into a pan, add the starter spices (the bag of whole spices), then set it over low heat.
- Once the mustard seeds start to pop, add the grated garlic and ginger and stir them through the spices. Keep stirring for about 30 seconds.
- Add the onion, stir it through, then turn the heat to medium and cook until it turns a deep amber.
If it looks like catching, splash in a little water and keep cooking patiently. (The point is to watch the spices rather than the onion — it matters far more that the spices do not burn.) - Once the onion is amber, add the canned tomatoes and salt: 1 tsp, crushing the whole tomatoes as you stir them in.
- When the tomatoes come to a gentle simmer, add all of the powder spices and stir, thinking of it as cooking the powder itself through.
- Add the prawn paste you prepared, the sugar: 2 tsp and the nam pla: 1 tbsp (soy sauce also works).
- Once it comes back to a simmer, add the prawn bodies and the sudachi juice and peel, and simmer for about 5 minutes.
- When it has thickened, adjust the salt, spoon it onto a plate and finish with the sudachi rounds.
| Inspice spice curry spice sets contain none of the chilli, cayenne or red pepper that usually carries the heat, so add as much as you like to suit your taste. |
If you plan to eat it the next day, we suggest taking the sudachi pieces out. They start to turn bitter.