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Feed your appetite for cooking with Penguin’s expert authors

Feed your appetite for cooking with Penguin’s expert authors

King Prawn and Curry Leaf Varuval

King Prawn and Curry Leaf Varuval

by The Tamil Prince from Tamila
With king prawns, curry leaves and tomato, this dry-fried curry dish is easy, quick to prepare and cooked all in one pan.
Serves 4
Total 10 min
Cook 10 min
Easy

From the book

by The Tamil Prince

Introduction from The Tamil Prince

My home-style, dry curry is a wildly underrated snack. It’s a simple, easy-to-assemble one-pan meal. Perfect when time isn’t on your side, but you want something fresh and healthy, this dish hits the spot every time.

Ingredients

20 king prawns, shell on
½ tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp cumin powder
½ tsp ground black pepper, crushed
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp coconut oil, or rapeseed oil
25g fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into thin strips
6 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
small red onion (around 70g),finely sliced
1 small tomato (around 50g), cut into bite-sized pieces
5 stems of fresh curry leaves (or 50 dried leaves)
2 stems of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
juice of 1 lime, to serve

Method

1

To clean the prawns, first twist off the head and then peel away the shell. Next, make a shallow cut along the back with a knife to expose the dark vein, which you can then pull out. I like to keep the tails on the prawns for this dish, but you can remove them if you wish. Once you’ve cleaned all the prawns, rinse them thoroughly under cold water. Leave in a bowl and set aside.

2

Put the turmeric powder, Kashmiri chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, ground black pepper and salt into a clean bowl. Mix the spices to combine, then add them to the bowl with the prawns. Mix very well so all the prawns are coated in the spices.

3

Heat the coconut oil in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add the slices of ginger and garlic. Toast them both together in the oil. Once they start turning a slightly golden colour, add the sliced onion. Because the onion is thinly sliced, it’ll only take a minute to cook.

4

Finally, add the tomatoes and the curry leaves from 2 stems. Keep moving the ingredients around the pan so they’re all cooking evenly. Once cooked down (approximately 5 minutes), add the prawns.

5

Make sure the prawns and the vegetables are evenly combined. Keep stirring until the prawns start to curl upwards and turn pink (2–5 minutes).

6

Turn the heat down to low and add 4 tablespoons of water. You need to add the water so the spices don’t catch and burn. Keep stirring to make sure the prawns continue to cook evenly.

7

Remove the remaining curry leaves from their stems and add them to the prawn mixture. Add a tablespoon more water if the prawns start to stick.

8

Chop the stems off the coriander, roughly slice the leaves and add to the prawns. Then remove the prawns from the heat and transfer them to your serving plate. Before serving, squeeze a lime over the top of the prawns.

Notes

If you don’t want to spend time de-heading and cleaning the prawns, you can easily buy king prawns without the shell and ready to cook from your local fishmonger or supermarket fish counter.

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