Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Deepavali cookout at home - 1

Mom wasn't in town for Deepavali and it was time to flex my culinary muscles again, so here's what I did. I wanted to have rice, but not plain rice. So I decided to cook something, and a little differently - without a pressure cooker. So I quickly sauteed some onions, red capcicum and garlic in a wok and tossed in some rice and quickly stir-fried it for a couple of minutes.

I then seasoned the entire mixture and poured in coconut milk, and further seasoned it with some Thai seasoning that I had. Once I got the ration of rice : liquid right (I made the balance by adding water), I sliced in a couple of chillies and covered the wok with a large cover. I think it took about 10 minutes, but keep popping the cover off after 10 mins to check when it's done - you don't want this thing drying out on you.



After the rice was cooked, garnishing was done with a little chopped coriander. Now all I needed were some spicy prawns.


I don't quite know what to call this rice, but for now I'll just call it yummy. The chillies I added turned out to be duds - they weren't spicy at all, which in fact turned out to be a blessing because the rest of the flavours stood out, and the coconut milk just made it soooo freakin' yummylicious.

OK I'll call it Thai coconut-milk flavoured rice (sorry, imagination not working here).

Rice - 1 cup
Coconut milk - 2 200ml packets + water to make up the difference
Red capcicum - 1/2
Onion - 1 large
Garlic - 3 cloves, sliced
Thai seasoning - how much ever you want until it tastes right
Coriander - for garnishing
Salt & pepper for seasoning

So now for the prawns. I got back to sauteeing the rest of the onions, a little tomato, and some garlic.


To this, I added about 3/4 teaspoon of cumin, and then added some prawns that were marinating in chilli powder, lemon juice, ghee and some salt. Cook on a high flame for about 4 minutes or so or until they lose their transparency and become opaque, and voila...

...this is what you end up with. I couldn't have enough snaps taken of this :)



I won't call these the typical Mangalorean prawns, so we'll just say spicy prawns.

Prawns - 250 grams
Tomato - 1/2
Onion - 1/2
Garlic - 3 cloves
Chili powder - 1 teaspoon heaped
Lemon juice from half a lemon
Cumin - 1/2 - 3/4 teaspoon
Ghee - 1 teaspoon (for marinade), 1 tablespoon (for cooking)
Salt to taste

Marinate the prawns for at least an hour in the salt, lemon juice, chili powder, and ghee. Heat pan with ghee and cook onions, tomatoes, garlic and cumin, and add the prawns and cook until done.

Thus ended part 1 of the cookout. Day 2 saw us head to our cousins place where there was a family get together, which meant more food :)

2 comments:

Eveline said...

Mercy! I’m gonna have to make you an honorary Southerner if you keep this up, bucko. Can’t wait for you to cook for me. You’ll be thoroughly dangerous. :P

A girl can dream, can’t she?

Karthik Shetty said...

As the poms would say, "Charmed, my dear lady" :D

 

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