Chingri/prawn Malai Curry- Prawn curry with coconut milk

This is a recipe for 3 servings with 3 pieces of prawns/chingri per person. The recipe can be altered depending on the number of servings or number of prawns per person

Difficulty: Medium
Preparation & CookingTime: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Prawns- 9 jumbo prawns (I use the uncooked and deviened)

Onion chopped- 1 big

Tomato- 1 medium-big

Potato- 1 small or medium, cut into cubes

Ginger garlic paste- 1 tbsp

Green chilly according to taste (I use 4)

coconut milk- ¾ cup (I use the powder and mix it in warm water)

Cinnamon stick-1

cardamom- 4

cloves- 4

Mustard oil/canola oil (I use mustard oil since the taste is better with it)- as needed

Cumin powder- ½ tspn

Coriander Powder- ½ tspn

Turmeric powder

salt

sugar- 1 tbspn

Method:

Marinate the prawn with little turmeric powder and salt for 15 minutes, then add ½ cup of water and microwave it for 2 minutes. (This would half cook the prawns) Then keep aside.

Heat the oil in a pan. Fry the potato cubes, and keep aside

Mince the whole garam masala (cardamom, cinnamon stick and clove) and add to hot oil (same oil where you fried the potato), let them crackle for few seconds, then add the chopped onions and fry till it is golden. Then add ginger garlic paste, and fry till oil separates. Keep sprinkling little water in the masala, so it doesn’t stick to the pan.

Once the masala is fried properly add the chopped tomato and green chillies to it. Add some salt, as salt helps the tomato to cook easily. Fry the masala till oil separates, and keep sprinkling water to it like before. Add the cumin powder, coriander powder and some turmeric powder to the masala while frying.

Once the masala is ready, add the water which we used for cooking the prawn in the microwave and cook it for 5 minutes, then add the coconut milk, and let it boil till you like the consistency of the curry. Some people like it thick, but I don’t like it too thick. Now add the prawns and put the stove on simmer. Let it boil for a minute, switch off the stove and cover it with a lid.

Let it stand for 5 minutes. Add the sugar now, stir and serve with steamed rice. I usually taste the curry once before serving to know if it needs more salt, or sugar. The curry should have a little tinge of sweetness to it.

Note: Cooking the prawns for too long will make them hard, and we don’t want that. So cook them just till the point that they are not raw. It took me a while to learn the exact time of cooking it