Coconut Prawn Curry

Home cooking as it is - I can pick up a cookery book intending to follow a recipe to the dot, but very much end up with something completely different when I'm done.

For me, it's a tug of war between buying too many little ingredients and using what I already have on hand. Most times, I go with the latter and get a feel of what the taste buds are telling me for the day. Sensible me!

This dish is a modified version of Chef Wan's Otak-Otak Makanan Laut (Seafood Otak-Otak) which I picked out from the recipe book 400 Resipi Terbaik Chef Wan. Chef Wan is the Food Ambassador of Malaysia. He is an amazing source of inspiration to me when it comes to cooking local food. A ton of spices, ingredients .... he doesn't cut corners! There are no shortcuts in his recipes.There are, however, in mine.

In short, I had set out to emulate a great Chef but ended up being 'just plain old me' - the home cook who's cautious about having too many food ingredients lying around. I say haha to that!

So, this is my version of a spicy coconut delight. ❤

Coconut Prawn Curry

It's strongly flavoured. I say this because the tom yum paste that I have used for this recipe is packed with taste. Best eaten with plain rice!

Coconut Prawn Curry
Ingredients:
- 1 young coconut (clean, save the coconut water and spoon out flesh, keep aside)
- 320g medium prawns (cleaned)
- 15 to 20 sweet basil leaves (chopped)
- 3 dried kaffir lime leaves (leaf stems removed, crushed)
- 1 limau nipis/key lime
- 1 red chilli (sliced)
- 1 tbsp blended dried red chilli
- 1 tbsp tom yum paste or to taste (bottled variety)
- 1 tbsp curry powder (mix a bit of water in, into a thick paste)
- 1 tsp kerisik (toasted coconut paste)
- ¼ tsp brown sugar
- 1 to 2 tbsp cooking oil
- Water, if necessary

How-to:
1) Heat oil in pan. Saute tom yum paste. Once browned, add curry powder and blended chilli. Stir quickly.

2) Add toasted coconut paste, sweet basil and kaffir lime leaves. Squeeze lime juice in and add brown sugar. Stir well, allow it to cook for a bit. Then, add coconut water. (Add water only if you want more gravy or find the flavour too strong.)

3) When the water begins to simmer, stir the prawns and red chilli into the mix.

4) Once the prawns are cooked, switch the heat off and gently stir the coconut flesh in.

1) Gathering the ingredients. 2) Spooning out the coconut flesh.
3) Yummy coconut flesh that's begging to be eaten.
4) Deveined prawns, with head and tail left on.

1) Saute tom yum paste. 2) Added the flavouring, now for the prawns.
3) Adding the chilli. 4) After everything is cooked, stir the coconut flesh in.

I served this in the coconut shell but could not fit it all in. The remainder went directly onto my plate of rice!

Coconut Prawn Curry And Rice!