My fascination with prawns go way back to many of my older posts in which I would have scribbled a tale or two. So I am not going to bore you with one of those boring repetitive incidents.
If at all you see me put on my disposable gloves whilst in the kitchen it is when I handle any raw meat or chop green chillies. As cruel as it sounds, I love pulling off the heads and tails and deveining these babies. I have kept a few with their tails on as they have been used in a lovely and light salad. Will update the recipe in the next post.
I did not get the guy to deshell them as I noticed the chap at the sea food counter was really busy that morning with people queuing up behind me.
Today I set about to make one of my favourite Naadan Vibhavangal (a traditional delicacy!) which is Konju thoran/prawns thoran/Prawns poriyal. After cleaning them up, I have sorted them in such a way that one would go into the salad and the other would shine in the thoran.
My gloves turned red with all the gooey stuff that came out from the heads of these beauties...beauty with brains?
Heads or Tails and tails it was!!!
Chopped a few green chillies to go into the blender, you need not chop them...I did them as I wanted to take a few pics so do keep them whole! A handful of grated coconut, a few shallots, green chillies can be pulsed in your blender or use it like how I did in a mortar and pestle along with a tsp. of turmeric and tsp. and a half of chilly powder. Pound/ pulse it roughly. Do not make a paste out of it as it decorates the thoran and you need to see the grated coconut at intervals.
One or two of these chillies or any less spicy ones that you have at hand have to be diced along with quartered shallots and finely chopped ginger
Into your sauce pan, in a table spoon of coconut oil crackle a few mustard seeds, dry broken red chillies and a few curry leaves.
The aroma of the coconut oil fills my lungs!!! The Malayali in me always awakens when a tadka/tempering of this is done! Orgasmic indeed!
Don't leave a tiny bit of that, once you have pounded it well as seen above, add a bit of water and clean that up and add it to the ensemble. It helps to keep the thoran moist!
Once the shallots, ginger and yellow chillies/thondan mulakku are sauteed and slightly turn translucent, throw in those grey prawns which immediately start to shrivel and blush in the pan. I have expressed in many of my posts on prawns how much I love observing that!
Toss them all well, don't forget the salt. Chilly powder and salt add to taste! Let them cook under a lid.
Once it turns pink (do not let it become rubbery) remove the lid and then let it cook without the lid until all the excess water that the thoran brought in while merging evaporates! I did add a dash of half a cheek of lemon. I do that with most of my non-veg...something that my late mom used to do!Kill any last minute germs!!!??? I seriously don't know, but do it for her sake. It does add to a bit of a tang in this dish!
Have them with a nice bowl of Kerala rice and some mango puliserry!
Ensure that you get an almost dry dish. The amount of coconut is also to your preference!
On a lighter note do read about this classic film of the 60s and watch this movie mentioned below :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemmeen This year it completes fifty years :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7JIfXxw6OU
This is a haunting song in which a story is woven about a woman owing to her unfaithfulness towards her spouse...the womenfolk lament that he would die at sea...so on and so forth. One has to watch the movie to understand!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUsrFGdh2HU
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