Prawn curries

For some reason, Paul's had a bee in his bonnet lately about prawn curry. He even called our home wifi network prawn curry. He declared that he believed a good prawn curry had to be possible, but that he'd never had one. He asked the guys at work for their best tips, and they all declared that asafoetida was key.

Which meant I had to buy asafoetida. And now means that I have most of a bag of asafoetida (which smells like an onion farted after drinking Guinness) in a sealed ziplock bag and that is in a tupperware tub and you can still smell it in the cupboard.

And I had to find a prawn curry recipe that actually used asafoetida.

I went with the Hairy Bikers Keralan prawn curry. Sorry about the autoplay video on that link. You'd have thought that everyone would know by now that autoplay is blooming annoying.

Hairy Bikers Keralan Prawn Curry

It was fine. A coconutty base but I found it too saucy and rich, and I honestly don't think the asafoetida contributed anything. I asked Paul whether the workmates he consulted have ever actually cooked anything and he assured me that they have.

Next up was Maunika Gowardhan's Malabar Prawn Curry. The slight acidity from the tomatoes and the hit of tamarind works much better with prawns than a rich coconut base, to my mind.

Maunika Gowardhan's Malabar Prawn Curry

We really liked the addition of the mustard seeds, but somehow it still wasn't quite there. We've had takeaway a few times recently from a South Indian restaurant, and discovered appam, so I had a crack at those as an accompaniment. Not very successfully.

First attempt at appam - batter too thick

Then we tried the prawn patia recipe from Camellia Panjabi's classic 50 Great Curries of India.

Camellia Panjabi's prawn patia

Another tomato-based one, with tamarind and a little sugar to balance.

2nd attempt at appam

And another unsuccessful attempt at appam. I think I will leave them to the experts.

The most recent one cracked the prawn curry, I think. I mostly followed Camellia Panjabi's recipe again, but added some black mustard seeds when I fried the cumin seeds at the beginning, included a good chunk of ginger in my garlic and chilli paste, and used fresh turmeric. It was exactly what I wanted in a prawn curry - hot, slightly sweet, with a tang that showcased the plump prawns.

I used leftover appam batter from my 2nd attempt as a frying batter for some squid rings, which I sprinkled with chaat masala (1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp amchoor, 1/4 tsp Kashmiri chilli, 1/4 tsp black salt) - much more successful than my appam.

My prawn curry