Hello my friends. It’s been a while I know. I’ve not felt like writing up the cooking I’ve been doing but I know I should. No matter what’s going on in my life, I’ve always found the writing of my food therapeutic which is why I started the page in the first place…..so here goes.

When it comes to ‘messy’ food I’m always a little put off. However, having spotted these black tiger prawns on offer in Morrisons I thought I’d have a go and knew exactly the recipe I wanted to do. Plus, I had some ‘normal’ large prawns that needed using up so I knew I could add them to bulk out the dish.

Ingredients-

2 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 red onion finely diced
1 tbsp of garlic finely diced
1 tbsp of ginger finely diced
1 lemongrass stalk finely diced
3 green finger chillies finely diced
15 – 20 curry leaves
Handful of green beans cut into small pieces
1 tbsp of curry powder
1/2 tsp of ground turmeric
1 tbsp of chilli powder (my mistake)
2 tomatoes finely diced
1 tbsp of Dijon mustard mixed with 1 tsp of melted coconut oil
Prawns
250ml coconut milk
Salt and pepper
Juice of 2 limes.

Method –

Most of the time in the dish was actually spent on the prep, which I love full stop when cooking. Dice the garlic, ginger lemongrass, chilli’s, green beans, onions & tomatoes. I do like being organised and tidy in the kitchen if I can.

Heat the coconut oil in the pan. Once the oil is hot add the diced onion. Fry for 5 minutes or so ensuring onions are slightly coloured.

Once the onions have taken on a nice colour, add the garlic, ginger, chilli’s, lemongrass & green beans. Fry these for a couple of minutes only.

Add the curry leaves and cinnamon stick. Stir these around the pan for 30 seconds or so.

Now you’re ready to add your ground spices….and this is sadly where I made a small schoolboy error. I added a bit too much chilli powder for my liking. Next time I know to scale this back. Add the turmeric, chilli and curry powders…….

Give the pan a good stir coating all the ingredients.

The kitchen will smell heavenly, which is why we do this. The oils from the ground spices will be released and the natural flavours are taken on by the onions. Add the dijon mustard mixture.

Follow this with the tomatoes. Give the pan another stir….

Add in your prawns. You will need to turn them occasionally to ensure they cook all the way through. I did at this point add a little water to stop the sauce sticking.

After 5 minutes it or so, the prawns will take on a lovely colour.

Give the pan another stir then add in the coconut milk.

The sauce will take its shape. Season with the salt & pepper. I added the prawns I already had and allowed them to heat through. The lime juice was mixed in.

I let the sauce simmer for a couple of minutes then served.

I did serve mine with some dhal that was left over from a couple of nights beforehand. The dhal helped take the heat out of the sauce.

The prawns were amazing, messy, but amazing. So much flavour in them. So pleased I took the leap of faith to do so. Trust me, I’ll be cooking with prawns or whole shellfish again.

Thank you again to the legendary Dan Toombs aka The Curry Guy for the continued inspiration. The recipe comes from ‘one pot cooking’ from The Curry Guy.

Thank you for reading my ramblings if you have.