Cook’s notes
Who doesn’t love fast-cooking meals, right? I know I do. While the rice cooked, I did the prep for the shrimp curry. By the time I was done cooking, the rice was perfectly fluffy and all I needed to do was assemble the rice bowls.
The key to the short cooking time is to get shrimps that had already been peeled and deveined.
If you have to start from scratch and clean the shrimps yourself (see illustrated guide), the prep time will be longer but there is an advantage. You might want to pound the heads and shells, and press out the juice. Add that juice to your curry sauce for a deeper and richer flavor.
But a short cooking time doesn’t mean taking short cuts with the curry sauce. Without it, this dish would just have been large shrimps swimming in a creamy yellow sauce. Creaminess is not enough. Store-bought curry powder needs help to make a good sauce. That means starting with fresh spices to create a good flavor base.
Using a mortar and pestle to grind the spices is traditional. But when I want to cut down on the prep time, I turn to my mini food processor to do the job in seconds. Otherwise, my family would be starving by the time I start the actual cooking.
The longest part of the cooking is sauteeing the ground shallots, garlic, ginger and chilies with a pair of julienned kaffir lime leaves and a teaspoon of shrimp paste. This has to be done over medium-low heat to really coax out the flavors. Five minutes are usually enough but it won’t hurt if you wait for the ground spices to brown a bit before proceeding.
Using a mortar and pestle to grind the spices is traditional. But when I want to cut down on the prep time, I turn to my mini food processor to do the job in seconds. Otherwise, my family would be starving by the time I start the actual cooking.
The longest part of the cooking is sauteeing the ground shallots, garlic, ginger and chilies with a pair of julienned kaffir lime leaves and a teaspoon of shrimp paste. This has to be done over medium-low heat to really coax out the flavors. Five minutes are usually enough but it won’t hurt if you wait for the ground spices to brown a bit before proceeding.20-minute shrimp curry rice bowl
Ingredients
- 500 grams large shrimps (1.1 pounds) peeled and deveined
Spice base
- 2 shallots peeled and roughly chopped
- 8 cloves garlic peeled
- 1 two-inch knob ginger peeled and sliced
- 2 bird’s eye chilies stems discarded
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 tablespoons curry powder
- 1 pair kaffir lime leaves thinly sliced (mid rib discarded)
- 1 teaspoon shrimp paste
Curry sauce
- 2 cups coconut cream
- fish sauce to taste
To serve
- cooked rice
- sliced cucumber
- sliced tomato
- cilantro to garnish
Instructions
- Rinse the shrimps, drain spread on a rack to allow water to drip off.
- Place the shallots, garlic, ginger and chilies in a mini food processor, and grind as finely as you can.
- Heat the cooking oil in a wok or shallow pan.
- Saute (medium-low heat) the ground spices, curry powder, kaffir lime leaves and shrimp sauce for about five minutes or just until the solids are starting to separate from the oil.
- Turn up the heat to high, pour in the coconut cream, stir in two tablespoons fish sauce and allow to boil for a minute.
- Allow the sauce to boil gently for a minute, taste and add more fish sauce to get a good balance between salty and sweet.
- Stir in the shrimps.
- Cook, uncovered, just until the shrimps change color.
- Turn off the heat and leave the shrimps to cook in the residual heat for another minute.
- Taste the sauce, add more fish sauce, if needed.
- Ladle rice into bowls, arrange the shrimps on top and drizzle in curry sauce.
- Arrange cucumber and tomato slices on the side, garnish with cilantro and serve your shrimp curry rice bowl.
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