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

Thanksgiving - green bean casserole and pumpkin pie

Quite often when Paul asks me to cook something for him I ignore him. A decade of him saying he wanted a dish only to be over the craving by the time I made it has taught me better. Like the time recently where he asked me to make a chocolate cake with caramel filling, only to admit that he only wanted a bite of a slice of such a cake. Fortunately I hadn't got beyond considering a recipe with that one.

In the last few weeks though, he's become interested in a couple of the elements of a classic American Thanksgiving dinner - pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. I've always found green bean casserole a baffling proposition, myself, so I was quite happy to go along with him this time and make a cut-down Thanksgiving dinner to give him a chance to try those things.

I've made pumpkin pie before. Although apparently not for about 15 years if I've never made it for Paul. I bought some shortcrust pastry and a can of pumpkin puree and consulted Heather's blog (always good for pie recipes), settling on her Buttermilk Pumpkin Pie. I added 1 tsp of freshly grated ginger and reduced the brown sugar by 1/4 cup, but otherwise followed the recipe.

The green bean casserole is a very strange thing. The idea of beans in cream of mushroom soup with a crunchy topping isn't particularly appealling. I'd always assumed that it was one of those dishes that had gradually been debased with convenience products, but when I started to look for a recipe to inflict on Paul I discovered that in its purest original form it used frozen beans and canned soup. It was, in fact, an invention of the Campbells soup company in 1955. I can't think of any other similar recipe that has had such an impact. In Australia maybe the salad on the side of the Chang's crispy noodle packet, possibly the cheesecake on the Philadelphia packet. But nothing so completely ubiquitous - Campbells estimate that they sell $20 million worth of Cream of Mushroom a year and that 40% of that goes into green bean casserole.

Pure form or not, I just couldn't. So I made this from-scratch version, although I admit I got bored and didn't bother making the fried onion garnish. We had it with a rolled, stuffed turkey breast and roast potatoes (I think mashed potatoes are more traditional but Paul isn't a fan). I didn't bother with the other elements of a Thanksgiving dinner - the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes - for just the two of us. The casserole was fine, I guess. The mushroom sauce was quite delicious - I'd make that element again, but I just don't think green beans and mushrooms are happy companions - they would have been better off as separate elements on the plate. Maybe the French fried onions really make the difference and pull the dish together, but I won't be finding out.

The pie, however, was excellent. Subtly spiced, not too sweet, perfect ratio of filling to pastry. We had it with a delicious new discovery of mine, Northern Bloc fresh ginger and caramel ice cream.

Even just a turkey breast gives a lot of leftovers. At this time of year there are articles all over the place on what to do with the remnants, but I already had a plan: the Kentucky Hot Brown.  An open-faced sandwich of tomatoes, bacon and/or ham, turkey, finished with cheese sauce and grilled. I used a white bloomer instead of the traditional Texas Toast, which I thought was a few calories too far. It's a particularly good version of the leftover sandwich, because unlike a lot of the others there's no jammy cranberry sauce or chutney, just savoury all the way through. Which is sometimes just what you need.