Kari Udang - Malaysian Prawn Curry

When you're a food blogger, recipes come to you by all manner of means.  There's the obvious ways, like via someone else's blog, or by a recipe site such as the great BBC Good Food.  Then there are the rather less obvious ways, such as when someone tweets you to say they've seen a great recipe they thought you might like and point you in the right direction.

Then there's the totally obscure.

Now, I was born in Malaysia and have a marked partiality towards any generic type of Malay recipe.  It's difficult to achieve true "generic" Malay recipes, because - like the U.K. - there have been so many culinary influences over time, that the genuine Malay foods have been rather bastardised over time.  However, when I see a recipe that purports to be genuine Malay, it makes me prick my ears up.

I've recently been promoting the blog gently via LinkedIn (where I'm Jenny Davies, if you're interested in connecting) and was contacted by Gopalasamy Balakisnan who recommended I visit his website www.malaysiaspice.biz where it goes under the name of The Spice Traders.  Just the name was enough to pique my curiosity, but while I was there and having a look around, I came across their Malaysian Recipes page.

There are quite a few recipes that sounded quite a way out of my comfort zone for cooking, but I thought if I investigated the "curries" page, that I might find something that would be a measure of the remainder.

The sauce, prior to adding the prawns

Which is how I came to find the Kari Udang.  (Are you still with me?).  The recipe came care of Mrs.Gandhiri Perumal, which okay I'll accept could have been a made up name just to make it look authentic, but you have to ask yourself why they'd bother to do that.

I liked the sound of the recipe, so onto the menu plan it went.

This curry is very definitely out of the run of the "ordinary" types of curry that I have made in the past.

It uses two different types of sliced onions, at different intervals.  Plus potatoes, aubergine and fresh tomato, along with an exciting list of spices such as mustard seeds, fenugreek, curry leaves and tamarind pulp - along with the prawns.  Now most of the spice list I had in the cupboard already, but I needed to find fenugreek and curry leaves.  Our local supermarket has been known to have curry leaves, because I've definitely bought them there in the past - but didn't appear to have any fresh when we went.  However, in the world food aisle, hubby pounced on a bag which appeared to say "Curry leaves" and all was well.  The fenugreek was a simple matter as they had great boxes of the stuff (which smells adorably like new mown grass).

I couldn't be doing with grating fresh coconut, so used a carton of coconut cream instead.  I suspect there wasn't much difference in the two!

The curry, ready to serve

So there I was, happily following the recipe and adding this, adding that, stirring and observing the dish as it changed and developed.  Until it came to adding the curry leaves - 10 or so - which turned out to be Bay leaves!  Oh no!  As hubby said - he would go and buy the one herb that we're never likely to need, as we have a beautiful bay tree in the front garden!  Which is why our Kari Udang was completely bereft of curry leaves.

Now I can't imagine that it would have made all THAT much difference to the eventual end flavour of the dish - certainly not where hubby was concerned, as he didn't like it at all.  Son & heir and I loved it and ate every little bit - son & heir even ate his Dad's helping.

If I were to make this again, there are a couple of points that I'd observe - and which I've taken account of in the recipe below.  One is to remember to find curry leaves, as they're there for a reason.  The other is to steel myself to hold out until the VERY last minute to add the cooked prawns, so as to prevent their becoming overcooked and rubbery - and decanting all their juice into the curry sauce, which watered it down too much.  Of course, using raw prawns would solve the problem - but then they're much more expensive.

I loved the lighter, fresher feel of this curry.  For all that it contained a complete carton of coconut cream, you could be forgiven for not knowing as the sauce was not heavy or cloying at all.  I think the addition of the large pieces of tomato helped where this was concerned.  I really enjoyed having a flavoursome curry that wasn't too frisky where spicy heat was concerned, but one that demonstrated so many different flavours in the same spoonful.

Don't be put off by the long ingredients list - as many of those ingredients will keep for a long time and thus can be used in other curries.  For instance, the tamarind pulp - I have had our block of tamarind for some months now and have found it keeps perfectly well in the larder cupboard (well wrapped, of course).  I try to bear my ingredients cupboard in mind when deciding on recipes to try, in that I'll pick a recipe that I have the majority of ingredients in stock already.  This makes best use of larger packs of herbs and spices and prevents your racing all around town every couple of days, looking for obscure ingredients.  Although, having said that, I'll be keeping my eyes open for curry leaves in the future!

KARI UDANG (Malaysian Prawn Curry)    Serves 3

Ingredients :

2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 large onion, sliced thinly & another, sliced thickly - used at separate intervals
a pinch of mustard seeds
half a tsp of fenugreek (mine was chopped leaves)
150g potato, peeled and diced small
half a tbsp tamarind pulp (I used dried, mixed with 1tbsp water then strained)
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 fresh green chillies, chopped finely
1-2 tbsp mild curry powder
10 curry leaves
sea salt
1 small aubergine, sliced thickly and cubed
250ml coconut cream (I used Blue Dragon)
2 large flavoursome tomatoes, cut into wedges

300g frozen King Prawns, defrosted (fresh would work as well, just add them much earlier in the process)
cooked white rice to serve, along with chapati or roti.

METHOD :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the thinly sliced onion, mustard seeds, fenugreek and potato cubes.  Saute until the potato are almost cooked and the onion has browned.  Set aside.

2.  Add the tamarind juice to the wok, along with the garlic, green chillies, thickly sliced onion, curry powder, curry leaves and 100ml or so of cold water.  Stir and cook until heated through and fragrant.


3. Add the aubergine and simmer until the aubergine is all but cooked.


4.  Add the coconut milk, the reserved onion/potato mix and tomatoes.  (If you are using raw prawns, now would be a good time to include them).  Cover and simmer until the sauce has had a chance to combine and the tomatoes have lost their rawness.


5.  Milliseconds before you are due to serve, drop in the prawns and simply heat them through.  Do not be tempted to leave them longer than is absolutely necessary, or you will find your carefully crafted sauce begins to lose its consistency.


Serve.


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Meal planning for a new week

We met again on Monday last, across a bed strewn with recipes, notepads, pens and Jack Russell terriers - and planned this week's meals.  Oh, the romance!

Well, actually, making a menu plan is a nice excuse for a cup of coffee and a couple of hours spent talking (almost exclusively) about food, flavours, what goes with what, what might go with what, what cooking methods to use, what turns out to be way too expensive, etc.  Allow for a bit of deviation from the focus of the conflab, to scratch a dog's ears or retrieve a pen from the other dog's mouth - you can imagine, if you've ever owned a dog, I'm sure.

We started from a position of "what do we know for sure we'll be cooking?", moved on to "what have we been yearning for?" and "what have we had in mind to cook?", winding up with "what's a family favourite that's easy to do?".

The final list looks like this :

Tues : Pizza

Weds : Springtime Pasta and meatballs

Thurs : Maneating Chicken, roast sweet potato with sesame broccoli & beans
Fri : Kari Udang with rice

Sat : Tarragon Chicken & Asparagus, Jersey Royals, broccoli & peas

Sun : Slow Roast Cinnamon, Fennel & Cirtus Lamb with Roast Rosemary & Sea Salt Jersey Royals, Green spring vegetable Thoran & gravy.

Mon : Chilli con carne with potato wedges.

Well, Tuesday's Pizza doesn't come into any of the categories above, as it forms a bit of a breathing space in between weeks.  It's good to just chuck a pizza into the oven every so often - and it's always a winner with son & heir.

Eat at lunchtime .. sleep rest of day

Wednesday's Springtime Pasta and Meatballs got bounced from last week owing to our having broken our tummies by eating the remains of the Tuna & Vegetable Lasagne for lunch.  I hasten to add that they weren't broken in a bad way, just broken in a "I couldn't eat another thing for many hours" kind of way.

Everything was keepable - even the Little Gem lettuce, which has kept very well in the vegetable drawer of the fridge - so it was easy to bounce along to this week.

Thursday's "Maneating Chicken" originated as "Man pleasing chicken", but the name got adjusted along the way by hubby.  He discovered the original recipe on the Witty in the City website and loved both the look and the sound of the recipe - plus, its reputation as "man pleasing chicken" is always a good sign.

He's going to be making roast sweet potatoes in a very similar fashion to the roast butternut squash (except with different spicing) that we had this last weekend with the pork.  It will be interesting to see how they turn out, as I have a great deal of problem getting sweet potato to caramelise and look roasted, instead of just mushed!

I think this one qualifies under the "what have we been yearning for?" category, as hubby has always wanted to find a really really good chicken recipe - one which knocks spots off of all the others.

The Kari Udang is a Malaysian recipe recommended to me by The Spice Traders.   Taken from their website, it has required a bit of sourcing of things like curry leaves and fenugreek, but we (pretty much) had the remainder of the spices in the cupboards and fridge already.  I really like prawn curries and we've picked up some King Prawns to use, so I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be great.  I think this one comes under the "what have we had in mind to cook" category, as I'm always in the market for an authentic Malay recipe.

Saturday's Tarragon Chicken with Asparagus is a recipe from this month's BBC Good Food magazine.  The minute I saw the photograph, it was love at first sight and I knew I had to make it - and soon.  It doesn't seem to have hit their website yet, or I'd show it to you - but take it from me that it looked completely gorgeous.

Cooked with lovely steamed Jersey Royal potatoes (which are our favourite type of new potato), broccoli and peas, I think it'll make a superb Saturday dinner.

Hubby's back in the kitchen with his "Sunday Lunch Chef" hat on next. We were originally planning on a salmon dish - right up until I saw an advert for reduced price lamb at Tesco.  I'm afraid I was swayed by this and we drove down to our local Tesco and made off with a leg of lamb just this morning.  We have since reconvened the brainstorming session (complete with accompanying Jack Russells, ever keen to be in the midst of a major conflab) and come up with what sounds like a terrific menu for Sunday's lunch.

Photograph c/o BBC Good Food website

It will now be a slow roasted leg of lamb - marinated in lemon & orange, rubbed with cinnamon, fennel & garlic, then roasted for a minimum of 4 hours.  As side dishes, we've come up with roast Jersey Royals with sea salt & rosemary, after which we go off up a complete side road with an Anjum Anand recipe for Green Spring Vegetable Thoran.  You can find the exact same recipe here, although it isn't credited to Anjum at all, so I don't know who got which from whom - but here it is, anyway.  The Thoran has no sauce as such, so will go very nicely with the lamb & potatoes, leaving us the elbow room in the ingredients list to make a lovely gravy from the lamb pan juices.


Wish hubby luck with this one, he's not going to need it, but he is going to need some support with just thinking about creating it all and having it all go right!

Good old Chilli con Carne makes another showing on the menu list for Bank Holiday Monday.  We all love this one, but to make it a little different this time, we thought we'd serve it with potato wedges.  It all depends on whether we've a lot of potatoes going wrinkly as to whether we make the wedges or just chuck some in the oven from the freezer!

Either way, with grated cheese and some sultanas to sprinkle on the top (you don't have sultanas?  What?  Try it, next time!) I know it'll be empty bowls all round.

I don't suppose the weather will do anything but rain, however, with the chance that we might see some sun on that day I've purposely not scheduled anything that takes a long time to make.  It'd be nice to get out and see something other than these four walls! 

Ruby's first crop of rhubarb - plenty more where that came from!

As for extra cooking, well we're still on the lookout for a good rhubarb chutney recipe and I've still to bake a cake.  I'm guaranteeing nothing where either of them are concerned, it all depends upon finding the right recipe (or dreaming one up!) and the time available!

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