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October 29, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — ros @ 2:50 pm

 King Prawn Mughlai Korma

On Saturday night, due to extreme exhaustion and a early morning tutorial near their house, I ended up staying with my parents. In fact it was just my Dad in the end as my Mum had a night shift at work.

Usually when I have to stay at my parents’, I get a take-away. They aren’t exactly into cooking (for stories on my Mum’s cooking see this post from when I started the blog!) and I always find the lack of basic storecupboard ingredients a little offputting. However last night I thought that I’d brave it since I had some king prawns which wouldn’t last much longer.

On the phone to Dad, he asked what I was going to cook. I said I’d be doing a prawn curry of some kind. Since Dad has recently started eating seafood again after many years as a veggie, he wanted to try some so I agreed to let him be my kitchen assistant for the evening.

Firstly I asked him what he had at home that I could use. He seemed unsure of what to answer. So I asked more specific questions.

“Do you have any natural yoghurt or cream?

“No. But you can have natural cottage cheese.”

THIS is why I rarely let them cook for me. They think substituting cottage cheese for a yoghurt and cream curry base is a good idea!

I thought I’d not risk asking him for anything else and emptied everything in my cupboards into a carrier bag before heading to Surrey. Due to a series of mishaps (inclusing Dad’s car breaking down), we didn’t get home until 10:30. So much for an early night then. :roll: I set about cooking a mughlai korma: a curry involving mild spices based on yoghurt, cream and almonds.

Having Dad as a kitchen assistant is interesting. He has a tendency to tidy things away very quickly, usually before you’ve finished with them. Also, despite living for thirty years in the same house, he has NO idea where anything is.

I found out quickly that even typical Sri Lankan ingredients are hard to get hold of in my parents kitchen. I asked, “Do you have curry leaves for the breadfruit?”

“No, but there are these things I found in the freezer.”

“What are they?”

“I don’t know but they look like leaves.”

I decided to avoid the unidentifiable green objects and went looking for a grinder to grind some almonds. You would not believe what we found. I would have taken a picture but Dad was too embarrassed to let me.

Literally this grinder was covered in about 6 years of fungal growth. It was hideous!  Dad ran off to disinfect it. Meanwhile I found a pestle and mortar and completed the curry.

Essentially, I made the curry by frying onion with a bay leaf, ground cinnamon, garam masala, crushed ginger and garlic then stirring in a mixture of natural yoghurt and saffron. Ground almonds, cumin, chopped coriander and double cream are stirred in and finally the prawns are added and heated through.

We tried to make a breadfruit curry too but that became a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. I like plenty of gravy with my curries but Dad apparently doesn’t. I put my usual amount of curry powder in with the breadfruit but when Dad took over he only added about half the water and coconut milk that I would have done. The breadfruit ended up a bit overspiced.

breadfruit curry 

The prawn curry turned out very well. It is a lovely creamy curry and the spices lend a delicate flavour. I made caraway seed rice to go with it too.

And finally, here are recipes. King Prawn Muglai Korma,   and my version of  Breadfruit Curry.

3 Comments »

  1. ros, now i’ve been struggling with my inability to get a curry fix for several days, and between you and adam from “men in aprons” i’m dying here! this looks fabulous… and i was just visiting Lea’s site and happened to read your comment, i totally think it would be great to see you catch the baking “bug”. hmm… maybe biscuits.. then you don’t have to leave the savory world :-)

    Comment by amanda — October 30, 2006 @ 7:56 pm

  2. Oh! I can TOTALLY feel for you with adventures in the parents kitchen!! My mother has been giving us “care packages” lately (because of the 2 mortgages we’re paying)… and just about EVERYTHING she has given us has been expired! O_O We went over there a few weeks back to have dinner and I was helping out… asked for a tomato.. and my step-dad pulls out this sad squishy sliced tomato from the fridge… complete with white fuzzy bits… I laughed at him.. and he looked at me.. dead serious.. and said.. “its still alright.. we can just cut those bits off”…..

    Its no wonder so many people eat fast food and take-out if their parents are tossing tomatoes like that into their dinner!! O_O

    Yes! Catch the baking bug!!!

    Comment by Lea — October 30, 2006 @ 10:45 pm

  3. Amanda - when you say biscuits, do you mean the things we Brits call biscuits (i.e. cookies) or those savoury scone type things? I’ve only ever had those once - when I was 10 and on holiday in Florida! LOL Not sure you get them over here.

    I like the idea of making cookies though. Double chocolate chip. Mmmm!

    Lea - My parents are the total opposite- sort of. They’re totally food hygiene obsessed. So everything in the kitchen is fresh but any meat gets cremated before being served - if it’s not black on the outside, it isn’t safe! They are totally ‘eat to live but not enjoy’ sorts.

    Comment by ros — October 31, 2006 @ 3:55 pm

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