Friday 18 October 2013

King Prawn and Mango Red Curry

Following on from my last post about easy suppers, here is another one for you.

It's a sure fire crowd pleaser and a recipe I wack out again and again whenever I have people round. The best thing about it is that it is super easy and quick and it can be both vegetarian and meaty so you don't have to worry about making different things. If your making the veg version just change the chicken stock for veg and leave out the prawns or chicken.

I reckon this recipe can feed 6 people or 4 with second helpings. It's great reheated too if you have left overs.

King Prawn and Mango Red Curry.

You will need:

3 spring onions
2 sweet potatoes (peeled and diced)
1 butternut squash (peeled and diced)
1 can of coconut milk
250ml of chicken stock (or veg)
1 and a 1/5 tbsp of fish sauce
2 ripe mangos
Half a jar of red curry paste
The juice of 1 lime
King prawns or chicken


In Sainsbury's you can usually buy bags of ready peeled and cubed squash and potato. If they have them, I always buy 2 of them for this and makes it even more of a speedy meal. If not then make sure you chop the squash and potato into similar sized cubes so they cook at roughly the same rate.


Throw your sliced spring onions into some hot oil in a heavy based pan, such as a Le Creuset and fry for a bit.


As they begin to soften add your red curry paste. Now my measurement isn't very accurate here as I like a strong and hot curry, so I add more paste. If you don't like yours so hot don't put as much is. Frying the paste makes it release all its aromas properly. You should do this with all spices when you use them.


Next add the coconut milk and stir. The lumps you see is the cream that sits on top of the coconut milk in the can, don't worry these will melt away.


Add the fish sauce to this mixture and give it a little taste. Add more curry paste if you want or fish sauce. You don't really need to salt this as the fish sauce is salty enough and acts as a seasoning. 


Now throw in the squash and potato and add the stock. 


Bring to the boil then turn down to a simmer and wait. If your making a chicken curry put the diced chicken in now. The hard part is over you just need to wait for the squash and potato (and chicken) to cook which probably takes around 20 mins. If you are leaving it veggie then thats it. Supper is practically ready. 

At this point I would now put on the rice to cook. 

The evening I was cooking this I actually had a sous chef, so you can leave them to watch over it for you.


Clifford's very attentive. 

Once the veg are cooked throw in the prawns. I use either raw, cooked or frozen depending on whats on offer. This time it was 2 packs of cooked king prawns for a fiver. Bargain. 

Prawns take hardly any time even if they are raw and you never want to over cook them as they turn rubbery and gross. So always leave them until last moment. 

The final touches are the mango and the lime juice. 

Mangos are a little bitch to peel and slice and all the rest of it. You usually end up covered in juice and sticky but no longer! I have a fool proof mango slicing and dicing trick. Cut the slides off the mango round that annoying stupid stone, I'm not even sure what shape that stone is, its so annoying. Anyway cut of the sides and then grab a glass. Your'e going to use the glass to take all the mango away from the skin. Like so....


Push that glass all the way along keeping close to the skin and your come out with a perfect oval of mango, mess free (the excess juice goes in the glass).


 The slice into chunks. SOOOOO EASY. 

Put this in the curry along with the juice of one lime and voila, dinner is served. 



Serve up into bowls with rice and try to ignore the weirdo staring at you, silently begging for a smidgen...


To demonstrate how easy and quick this was, all I'll say was; I left work at 7, went to the shops to get everything, was home by 7.30, cracked open the wine and welcomed the Bru's to the humble abode and we were eating dinner by 8.45. I didn't even buy the cheat packs of veg as they didn't have them. Now hows that for a speedy dinner party?

I apologise for the quality of the photos in this post. Not some of my finest work. 



















4 comments:

  1. That is the easiest way to cut mango I have ever seen!! I usually use a knife but a cup is ingenious! Looks delicious!

    { Teffys Perks Blog } X

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    1. It is! The best bit is the cup catches all the juice so you hardly lose anything! Thanks for reading!!

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  2. That is such an ingenious way to cut a mango!

    This looks delicious too, I'm really into trying out new curries at the moment, so this sounds perfect!

    Hmm maybe...

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    1. Its a perfect curry, so so simple! I also discovered yesterday that M&S also sell the ready made bags of squash and sweet potato! Enjoy! :)

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