Prawn Curry

Ingredients

• about a pound and a half of prawns
• two ounces of good tinned butter
• a clove of garlic finely minced
• a table-spoonful of good flour
• a dessert-spoonful of turmeric powder
• a tea-spoonful of salt
• a scant one of sugar
• a tea-spoonful of mixed cloves and cinnamon powder
• A breakfast-cupful of thick chicken broth, or fish consomme
• a heaped-up table-spoonful of sliced green ginger
• three green chillies cut into Julienne-like strips
• a tea-spoonful of lime-juice

Method

1. 1

   Boil the prawns until they turn rosy pink, then drain and shell them.

2. 2

   Clean the prawns and dust them with flour.

3. 3

   In a pan, melt butter and fry onions and garlic.

4. 4

   Add flour, turmeric, salt, sugar, and spices.

5. 5

   Stir in chicken broth and ginger.

6. 6

   Add prawns and cucumber, let rest, then simmer.

7. 7

   Stir in the coconut infusion and lime juice before serving.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Culinary jottings (1885) by A. R. Kenney-Herbert, page 170. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

about a pound and a half of prawns weighed in their shells. Boil, and as soon as the prawns turn a rosy pink, stop, drain them from the water, let them get cold, and shell them, removing their heads completely. Next pass a knife down the line of the back of each prawn, slightly open the groove as it were, and pick out of it the black gritty dirt that you will find there. CaiTy out a similar process with the inner line, and cast the cleaned prawns CURRIES— CONTINUED. 301 into a basin of spring water. Having washed them again thoroughly, pick them out, and dry them on a cloth. If very large, you must now divide them in halves length- wise, and sever each half in twain. Dust them over with flour, and put them on a dish. They are now ready. (c) — Choose a very large cocoanut, the fresher the better, break it in half, and, with a cocoanut scraper, remove the whole of the white flesh, casting it into a bowl. Upon the raspings thus obtained, pour a breakfast-cupful of boiling water, leave it for a quarter of an hour, and then strain the liquid off. This is the best or " number 07ie' infusion, which must be put away, and not added to the curry till the last thing before serving. Return the raspings to their bowl, and pour over them a pint and a half of boiling water, stir well, and let the liquid stand for half an hour. It should then be strained, and the nutty atoms squeezed dry in muslin, so that every drop of the cocoanut essence may be secured. The liquor thus obtained is the " mim- her two'' infusion. Our preparations are now complete. {d) — Put two ounces of good tinned butter into a stew- pan, and mix into it, as it melts over a brisk fire, a white Bombay onion shi^ed into rings, and a clove of garlic finely minced. Lightly fry, but do not allow the onions to turn colour before adding a table-spoonful of good flour, a dessert-spoonful of turmeric powder, a tea- spoon- ful of salt, and a scant one of sugar, a tea-spoonful of mixed cloves and cinnamon powder, and, by degrees, the " number two infusion." A breakfast-cupful of thick chicken broth, or fish consomme — made by simmering some fish bones, prawn shells, and scraps of fish, in water, with an onion, a carrot, and some parsley — may now go in to assist the composition, together with a heaped-up table- spoonful of sliced green ginger, and three green chillies cut into Julienne-like strips. The liquid is now ready for the prawns, so remove the stew-pan from the fire, and 29 S02 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS, place it in a bath of boiling water, to keep warm, while you add the prawns and the slices of partly-cooked cucum- ber. It will be found an excellent plan to permit the curry — now all but ready — to rest for about half an hour, at the expiration of which the pan may be placed over a moderate fire, and its contents brought to simmering point. When satisfied that both the prawTis and vegetable are tender, the " number one" infusion may be stirred in, and with it a tea-spoonful of lime-juice. Five minutes' sim- mering will now complete our task, and the curry can be dished up, and served. It should be noted carefully that the water found inside a cocoanut is not " cocoanut milk" accoi*ding to the culi- nary vocabulary. The infusion is what should be used in curry-making. Fillets of any firm-fleshed fish, or even neat fillets of chicken, may be treated precisely in the manner I have described. As, however, it is necessary partly to cook prawns, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, &c., separately, a longer process of simmering will be necessary for raw fillets. The pieces of chicken should be lightly tossed in butter in a sait^t'-pan with a finely-shred onion, before being put into the curry sauce. The MOLi is prepared in this manner : — Melt a couple of ounces of butter, and fry therein an onion sliced into rings, and a clove of garlic minced, a few stHps of green chilli, and some slices of green ginger ; stir into it a table-spoon- ful of flour, and add by degrees the " number two infusion" just alluded to. Work this to the consistency of a rich white sauce adding a little broth if necessary, heat up some slices of cooked fish or chicken in it, and finish off, as already described, with " number one infusion," and a tea-spoonful of lime-juice. A little turmeric powder may be used if the yellow colour be considered desirable. If raw fish be used, the simmering process will be necessarv CURRIES— CONTINUED. 303 Old Indian cookery books give a number of recipes for KTJBAB curries, for tbe most part of purely native design, and requiring condiments and ingredients whicli were per- haps appreciated by our forefathers who adopted an almost Oriental method of life. The best hubab, to my mind, us one made of tender mutton or veal, and treated as fol- lows '. — Cut the mutton into thickish pieces, about an inch square and half an inch thick ; cut out of some slices of good bacon some pieces an inch square also, but about a quarter the thickness of the mutton ; cut up some pieces of parboiled white onion upon the same pattern as the bacon, and some thin slices of green ginger to match. Impale these mixed pieces upon small plated or silver skewers, or upon thinly-cut wooden ones, maintaining the order I have given, viz., jBrst a piece of mutton, then a piece of bacon, then a bit of onion, and lastly, the thin slice of green ginger. Having repeated this until the skewer is filled, go on with another. When all have been completed, the huhdhs should be simmered in a good curry sauce as recommended for chicken curry. Before being added to the sauce, however, they should be lightly tossed in butter in a saute-ip2in with an onion sliced, a tea-spoonful of salt

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.