The Indian subcontinent · Volume 18, The Ilish, the Chhena and a Border the Kitchen Never Kept
Chingri malai curry
West Bengal
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Large prawns, lightly fried first in turmeric and salt, then finished in a sauce of coconut milk and ground coconut paste with onion, ginger and garlic, whole cardamom, cinnamon, clove and bay leaf. "Malai" here has nothing to do with cream; it is thought to derive from Malaya, naming the coconut-milk technique's own trade-route origin rather than a dairy ingredient. This chapter could not source a single fully quantity-complete version with confirmed step timings; the recipe below is a composite of the ingredient ratios and method most consistently repeated across the sources gathered, not one directly read, named recipe.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 500g large prawns, shell on or off
- 0.5 tsp turmeric, for the initial fry
- 1.5 cups coconut milk
- 0.5 cup ground coconut paste
- 1 tbsp onion paste
- 1 tsp each ginger and garlic paste
- 0.5 cup ghee or mustard oil
- 1 tsp coriander powder
- 1 tsp chilli powder
- 2 bay leaves, 3 to 4 cardamom pods, a 2-inch piece cinnamon, 3 to 4 cloves whole bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon, clove
- to taste salt
Method
- Lightly fry the prawns in the turmeric, salt and a little of the fat, the ghee or mustard oil, until just coloured, not cooked through. Set aside.
- Temper the whole spices, the bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon and clove, in the remaining fat, then fry the onion paste, ginger paste and garlic paste until fragrant.
- Add the ground spice powders, the coriander powder and chilli powder, loosened with a splash of water, cook until the raw smell lifts, then stir in the coconut paste and coconut milk.
- Simmer gently until the sauce comes together and thickens slightly, then return the prawns and finish cooking through, a matter of a few minutes given how lightly they were fried at the start.
What a modern chef changes
The coconut base built fresh, not from a tin
Rung 3, adapted
Method
- Toast the ground coconut paste dry in the pan before the liquid coconut milk goes in, a step this chapter's research did not find sourced but which follows directly from the Maillard logic already established at Rung 3, for a rounder, less flat coconut flavour than a straight tinned-milk sauce gives.
- Poach the prawns separately, briefly, and add them only at the very end, off direct heat, to protect their texture, rather than simmering them through the full sauce reduction.
- Finish with a spoon of the sauce blended smooth in a high-power blender and passed through a chinois, poured over rather than mixed through, for a two-texture plate, whole prawns in a coarser sauce, plus a silken, concentrated version of the same flavour alongside.