Thai King Prawn Curry

King Prawns cooked in a delicious Thai red curry sauce.

This is a quick and easy recipe to make a delicious Thai prawn curry, although you can substitute the prawns for chicken, pork, white fish or tofu if you are a vegetarian. Serve with boiled fragrant jasmine rice.

The authentic flavours come form a wonderful homemade curry paste, like all good Thai curries. There are quite a few ingredients in the paste, however they are perfectly balance and can be used in many other dishes. All the ingredients I use are easily obtained in Scotland from your local Asian supermarket, and increasingly your regular supermarket.

  For this recipe you only need half the paste, the other half can be stored in fridge for up to five days, or frozen for next time. You can also use the paste to marinade chicken before roasting, or as I did marinade tiger prawns then roast them in the curry paste – just amazing!

Serves Two people

Preparation 10 minutes, cooking time 10-12 minutes

 

Ingredients and method

For the curry paste:

4 large red chillies – remove stalk  and seeds

6 bird eye chillies – remove stalk and seeds

3 red onions – peel, roughly dice

Thumb sized piece root ginger – peel, roughly chop

2 sticks lemongrass – bruise, remove outer husk and thinly slice

1 medium sized garlic bulb – peel each clove

2 tbsp. cashew nuts

Juice of 2 limes

2 lime leafs

2 tbps ketchup manis

2 tbsp. oyster sauce

1 tbsp. dark soy sauce

3 tbsp. vegetable oil

2 tbsp. coriander stalks

3 tbsp. desiccated coconut

3 tbsp. brown sugar

3 cardamom pods

3 cloves

Method: Use a mini blender or food processor to blitz all the ingredients into a smooth paste. Cutting the harder and more fibrous ingredients such as the ginger and lemongrass helps for a smoother paste. You can also do this the authentic Thai way by using a mortar and pestle – unfortunately due to my disabilities I can no longer do this.

You only need half the paste for this recipe, to store the other half either freeze it (does not effect the flavour like some claim) or store it in a refrigerated airtight container for up to 5 days.

For the main dish:

Half the curry paste

150-200ml coconut milk

50ml water

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

225g Raw king prawns – Shells removed, devein

1 large red chilli – remove stalk, thinly slice

6-8 large Mint leaves – bruise, thinly sliced

2 tbsp. roughly chopped coriander leaf

Method: Heat 1 tbsp. of oil in a wide deep frying pan or wok over a high heat. Add the curry paste, reduce heat to medium and stir fry for 6-8 minutes until the paste is very aromatic. If it begins to catch add a little of the water to loosen the sauce.

Add the water and 150ml coconut milk to the sauce along with the mint leaves, increase the heat until the sauce begins to boil then reduce to a simmer for 2-3 minutes. Taste test the sauce, add a little extra coconut milk if you wish but keep some to drizzle over the dish. Add the prawns and poach them in the sauce for 1-2 minutes, until they change from grey to pink and sauce starts to bubble again.

To complete the dish sprinkle the chopped coriander and sliced chillies on top, and drizzle a swirl of coconut milk on top (1-2 tbsp.). Serve straight away with some fragrant boiled jasmine rice.

Please browse my other recipes