Prawn Pathia – Sweet and Hot Sauce

It’s been a busy few months as we contibue to adjust to parenthood and with a more active baby, who is staying up a bit later in the evenings, our time in the kitchen has been impacted and for a while it was back to quick and easy meals my husband could cook while I battled through bathtime and bedtime tears.

We seem to be going through a calmer phase (fingers crossed) and last night my husband decided it was time for a curry! Now it seems like I only ever post curry recipes but we don’t eat it as often as you might think. The curry he cooked last night is one that can be done relatively quickly and more importantly the curry base can be prepared ahead of time, with the meat/ fish added in later. We decided on prawn, but this would work equally well with chicken or veggie. Be warned, the chilli’s are hot and 2 little green birds eye chillis meant a cooling raita was a much needed accompaniment! The curry originates from Persia I believe and its USP is the mix of sweet and hot. On googling I found a number of recipes that used different ingredients for the sweet including mango chutney & jaggery. We decided to use palm sugar and that worked just as well – as you know we don’t believe in buying lots of ingredients but instead continue to adapt recipes based on what we have in our cupboards!

Prawn Pathia – Serves 2

What you need
•450gshelled, uncooked prawns (we used frozen king prawns)
•1½ teaspoon tamarind pulp – or if you can’t find this, tamarind paste is fine. Again you may need a bit more depending on strength of paste so add 1½ tsp and then taste and add more if needed.
•5 green chillies, chopped OR 2 small birds eye green chillis!
•3 garlic cloves
•1 teaspoon cumin seeds
•50ml oil
•2 large onions, finely chopped
•½ teaspoon cumin powder
•¾ teaspoon coriander powder
•¾ teaspoon red chilli powder
•1 teaspoon garam masala powder
•½ teaspoon turmeric powder
•2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped
•1 teaspoon palm sugar (or jaggery if you are being a purist or mango chutney but you might need a bit more)
•10 curry leaves (dried are fine)
•¼ cup coriander leaves
•salt

What to do

– If using tamarind pulp, soak in water for 30 mins. Personally I find tamarind paste much easier to use!
-Grind the chillis, 2 of the garlic cloves and the cumin seeds into a paste
-Heat the oil and fry onions till golden,add the paste and fry for a further 2-3 mins till fragrant.
-Add cumin, coriander, red chilli, garam masala and tumeric.Stir well for a minute and then add the chopped tomatoes. Continue to stir regularly for 5 mins, allowing the “masala” to fry.
– Now add the tamarind paste (or half the tamarind water), palm sugar and coriander leaves plus 1½ tsp salt and mix well.Now taste and adjust the sweet/ sour and hot taste to your liking by adding more palm sugar/tamarind/ chilli.
-Add 150ml of water and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 mins.
– Add the prawns and cook till done.

Serve with basmati rice, a daal and some raita depending on how hot the chillis you have