How to make an easy shrimp curry influenced by Indian and Southeast Asian spices
- Using a commercial curry blend makes the dish easier to cook, but it’s still delicious
- Find fresh curry leaves, mustard seeds and chillies to add a wonderful fragrance to the curry
It’s difficult to imagine how bland our food would be without the spices of South and Southeast Asia. The spice trade has influenced cuisines in ways we take for granted. Can you imagine cooking without pepper? Or baking without nutmeg, cinnamon or vanilla?
The spice trade went both ways. Chillies, for instance, made their way from Mexico, Peru and elsewhere in Latin America to the rest of the world, where they are now considered an inherent part of spicy cuisines, such as those of Korea and India.
This simple shrimp curry has its main influences in India, with a bit of Southeast Asia thrown in. Because it uses commercial curry powder, instead of the traditional Indian technique of frying, pounding and blending spices specifically for seafood, it’s a lot easier to make (and less complex) than curries found in India. But it’s still delicious.
Easy shrimp curry
For this dish, I like to remove the shells from the shrimp but leave the heads attached. If you’re feeding people who dislike shrimp heads, trim them off, and use them and the shells to make shrimp stock for another dish.
Curry leaves have a wonderful fragrance that is lost when they are dried. You can find fresh ones at shops selling South Asian ingredients (along with mustard seeds and dried chillies). Curry leaves do, however, maintain some of their fragrance when frozen, so buy more than you need, wrap the excess in an airtight bag and freeze.
12 fresh shrimp, with bodies about 10cm long
1 white onion, about 230 grams, peeled
2 large garlic cloves, peeled
30 gram chunk of peeled ginger
2 lemongrass stalks, the juicy lower part (about 8cm)
3-5 red bird’s-eye chillies
1-2 green banana chillies, preferably long slender ones
15 grams palm sugar (or granulated sugar)
3-4 stalks fresh curry leaves
3 dried Indian chillies
¾ tsp black mustard seeds
Fine sea salt, as necessary
1½ tsp curry powder
20ml fish sauce
10ml fresh lime juice
About 250ml coconut milk
About 25ml cooking oil
Fresh coriander sprigs, to garnish
1 Use kitchen shears to trim off the antennae and sharp spear from the head of the shrimp, cutting them off just behind the eyes. Remove the shells, except for the tail.
