It feels like ages since I last cooked shellfish and posted. It has, however, been just a few weeks (a month, if you will). Since the last cook-up I’ve been in South Africa for a friend’s wedding and ate some amazing fish as well as the odd shellfish or two. One of the most memorable meals was on our last night in SA in Durban and on the recommendation of a friend went to 9th Avenue Bistro http://www.9thavenuebistro.co.za/. I had a truly fantastic starter of Cajun pork cheek and tiger prawn tail with sweet potato, chorizo and corn bread crutons. Amazeballs.
But back to my cooking….
Tomorrow’s the fourth installment of oneshellfishamonth and we’re moving onto prawns. King prawns to be precise. I’m doing them in a tandoori mix – my mum’s recipe – which is delicious. Mum usually uses the mix for chicken, making it up with yoghurt, marinating the chicken in the mixture and baking it. However, when I lived in Brussels I’d season the prawns in the tandoori mix, fry them and add the yoghurt at the end to give it the sauce. Here are the ingredients for the mix, which’ll do for 1 whole chicken (jointed), or for about a kilo+ of prawns:
8-10 garlic cloves, crushed
1 inch ginger, chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp turmeric
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground cardamom
¼ tsp salt
Chilli powder to taste
1 x 500g pot of natural yoghurt
As well as the tandoori prawns I’m cooking Bombay potatoes (dice the potatoes and then fry mustard seeds, whole cumin, turmeric, a pinch of chilli powder and salt in vegetable oil and then slowly add the diced potatoes until they’re all in, then add a dash of water and gently cook until the potatoes are done), kuchuba (diced red onions, tomatoes, chopped coriander and salt) and Madhur Jaffrey’s Baigan achari (spiced aubergine) and rice. And I’ve made a mango cheesecake to finish. Yes, the recipe’s from Tesco, but I’m not a snob when it comes to sourcing recipes 🙂
The cheesecake and baigan achari are cooked, so it’s just everything else to do tomorrow….
Annoyingly my iphone’s not working (there was an incident with washing liquid) so hopefully one of the SEVEN people coming for lunch will take pics for me to use in my blog update. I’ve got a mix of “regulars” and newbie attendees, hopefully it’ll all go down a treat. We may even sample one or two of the SA wones we brought back….yum. 11 hours and 50 mins until lunchtime….
oneshellfishamonth 