The Indian subcontinent · Volume 21, The Convent Kitchen, the Temple Kitchen and the Toddy Tapper’s Coast
Prawn balchão
Catholic Goa, plausibly via Portuguese Macau
Illustration
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 48 sources in the brief
The pickle that behaves like a curry. Cooked down until it holds like a preserve, not eaten fresh.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 40 minutes, plus a day's rest.
Ingredients
- 500 g prawns, peeled
- 10 dried Kashmiri chillies, soaked
- 6 garlic cloves
- 2.5 cm ginger
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 6 tbsp toddy vinegar
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- to taste salt
- 3 tbsp coconut oil
Method
- Blend the soaked chillies, garlic, ginger, cumin and mustard seeds with the vinegar to a thick paste.
- Fry the onions in coconut oil until deeply golden.
- Add the spice paste and cook until the oil separates and the raw smell is gone.
- Add the prawns, sugar and salt, and cook down until the mixture is thick and glossy, no longer wet, behaving like a pickle rather than a curry.
- Cool, jar, and rest at least a day before serving; balchão keeps for weeks refrigerated.
What a modern chef changes
A more controlled reduction and a cleaner prawn texture
Rung 5.
Method
- Cook the spice paste down fully before adding the prawns, then add the prawns only in the final few minutes, so they never overcook while the sauce reduces.
- Reduce in a wide, uncovered pan, checking by texture rather than time, exactly as balchão's traditional method already implies but rarely states outright.