Prawns Curry

iSaltPepper: Prawns Curry with Chapatis

Being born in a vegetarian eating family, I know nothing about non-vegetarian food and never thought that I will ever cook it in my life. My husband introduced me to non-vegetarian food and a new world of food opened to me. I liked it, so I started to cook it.

Today I am going to share with you a recipe of Prawns curry. There are many different ways in which prawns or any type of fish are cooked in India. But among all other Indian curries and their recipes I know and have tasted, this prawns curry is the easiest recipe to do and is my most favorite.  Let's see how to make it!

Ingredients

1. Raw prawns (fresh or frozen)
2. Garlic - 6 or 7 cloves
3. Grated coconut - 1/2 cup (If it is frozen heat in the microwave for 1 min). 
4. Kokum - 3 pieces or Tamarind - 1.5-inch piece or Lemon - 1/2
5. Coriander  - Finely chopped, 1/2 cup
6. Green chilies - 2
7. Chili powder - 3 Teaspoons
8. Salt
9. Garam Masala - 1 Teaspoon  (optional)
10. Turmeric powder - 1 Teaspoon (optional)
11. Oil - 3 Tablespoon
12. Water - 2 cups

iSaltPepper - Prawns Curry Preparation

iSaltPepper - Mixed ingredients before boiling

Procedure

1.  Peel and wash prawns and marinate with little chili powder, salt, and turmeric powder. Keep aside.
2. Cut garlic into small pieces.  Make a fine paste of garlic, coriander, green chilies, and coconut.
3. In a pan, take above paste made in step 2, prawns, and kokum. Add chili powder, salt, and turmeric powder. Also, add 2-3 pieces of kokum. If you don't have kokum, you can use tamarind or lemon juice. Add oil and water.  Mix everything stirring lightly.
4. Keep on medium flame/power and let it boil for 8-10 mins.  Switch off the gas.
5. Prawns curry is ready. Serve it hot with Rotis/chapatis and rice.

Pure Ghee

iSaltPepper: Pure Ghee

Pure ghee, means clarified butter. An important ingredient used in Indian Gastronomy. Lots of Indian dishes are cooked using ghee. Some of these dishes can be cooked without ghee also. But ghee makes them delicious. Health-conscious people try to avoid ghee as it has lots of saturated fats. Definitely, it should not be eaten in excess. But if it is eaten in controlled portions, it has lots of advantages for your health.
We all know the traditional process of making pure and tasty ghee at home. We have grown up seeing our grandmothers and mothers making ghee in the traditional way. But it is time-consuming. In today's fast-paced world it is always not possible to follow that method of making ghee. And if you are living in foreign countries with different weather conditions, different kinds of milk processed in a different way available in markets, then the end product of ghee doesn't come out as expected.  That's why I am sharing below my simple method of making ghee using butter available in any supermarket.  I use ghee made by this method for all my cooking like making laddus, sweet sheera, to apply on rotis/ chapatis and to eat with rice or khichadi.  It tastes delicious.  It's very easy and is done in 15 mins.

Ingredients:

1. 2 packs of unsalted butter available in any supermarket

Pure Ghee

Method:

1. Take bricks of butter in a pan
2.  Keep the pan on slow flame/power
3. Butter starts melting, keep stirring intermittently.
4. Once all butter is melted it starts getting clarified.
5. Switch off the gas before it starts boiling. Otherwise, its color will become brownish.
6. Strain the melted butter with a strainer and let it cool. Pure ghee is ready.
7. Store it in a dry jar. 

How To Setup Kitchen For Indian Cooking?

isaltPetter: Indian Kitchen Setup

In 2001, for the first time, I moved out of India. For my work, I was relocated to a small town on Lake Constanz, on the southern border of Germany.  It was an astonishingly beautiful place amidst three beautiful countries Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.  Nature was at its best. But the food was a cultural shock. Though I was trying to adapt to the food available there, I was badly missing Indian food. In that small town, there was only one Video Cassete library run by an Indian person, who also use to sell some Indian groceries in the basement of his shop. So, the supply and choice of Indian groceries were limited. That was the time when my adventure of Indian cooking as an inexperienced cook in a foreign country was started.  After that, I moved to multiple countries and lived there. But everywhere what I learned is that setting up your kitchen should be the first task wherever you go. And if you have small kids with you then you have to do it asap.

So here are some tips to set up your kitchen quickly. We can say that a kitchen is well equipped if it has all the required utensils and the groceries/ingredients required for cooking. According to me for Indian cooking, the most important utensils are

• A wooden/fiber round board (Polpat in Marathi) for making rotis/chapatis,
• A belan 
• A pressure cooker. 

Nowadays many people use different types of electric rice cookers.  But I like to use a pressure cooker. Using a pressure cooker, we can cook many things at a time. I always bring these three things from India. Also, a set of 2-3 different types of cooking pans is needed, but those are generally available in any rental house.  If you are not sure about it, you can find out more about it in advance, whether basic utensils will be available in the house or not.


Required basic groceries include

• Rai
• Jeera
• Turmeric powder
• Chili powder
• Garam masala
• Asafoetida (hing)
• Tea powder
• Toor dal
• Rice
• Wheat flour.

If you can manage to bring these things in a small amount in your luggage then well and good. Otherwise, you will have to make one trip to some Indian grocery shop to start cooking after you arrive in a new country.

Apart from this you also need

• Salt
• Sugar
• Oil 
• Fresh Vegetables

which are always available in any grocery shop in any country. With these things in your kitchen, you can start basic cooking. You can enhance it later anytime.

Keeping this small list handy, setting up a kitchen will be easy. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Why iSaltPepper ?

You all might be wondering why the name is iSaltPepper? Well, salt and pepper are the main ingredients of Indian cuisine. We all know that.  So, I wanted the name of my blog to be SaltPepper. But obviously, it is very common and it's very difficult to get a domain name with only "SaltPepper" in it and required some modification. Since this blog is mainly about Indian cooking, I added "i" at the beginning of SaltPepper and I got a unique domain name for my Blog. So the name is "iSaltPepper".  It has nothing to do with "Apple" or "Iphones"  and so on.. .

Why am I writing this blog?

Because writing is my hobby. Whether cooking is my hobby or not is still a question! But I cook, I cook every day!! And I like to share food with others. In these days of social distancing, if not food then at least recipes 😉. I am not a great cook, and these are not my own recipes. I have learned those from others, from my mother and other ladies in the family, from friends, relatives, TV shows, magazines, recipe books and the internet. This blog is just a collection of Indian recipes that can be done in other countries where limited Indian grocery is available.

Feel free to share this blog with your friends.

Vada-Pav

Ingredients

1. Ginger - 2 inch
2. Garlic - 7-8 cloves
3. Green Chillies - ( 4-5)
4. Potatoes (8 medium-sized)
5. Gram Flour - 2 cups
6. Chilli Powder - 1 Table Spoon , 1 Tea spoon
7. Garam Masala - 1/2 Tablespoon (Optional)
8. Turmeric powder - 2 Teaspoons
9. Asafoetida  (Hing) - 1 Tea Spoon
10. Salt - As per your taste
11. Coriander - 3 tablespoon
12. Oil - 3 Tablespoons  and for deep frying
13. Pav (White bun bread (not sweet)) - 10 pieces
14. Butter
15. Onion -2 

Procedure

Gram flour batter with spices

1. Make a fine paste of ginger, garlic, and green chilies. Keep aside.
2. Boil, peel, and mash potatoes.
3. Add chili powder, garam masala, turmeric powder, and salt on mashed potatoes and mix properly.
4. In a frying pan, heat 3 tablespoons of oil, once heated, add ginger-garlic-chili paste to it, fry for 2 mins.  Then add mashed potatoes mixed with dry spices (as mentioned in step 3) and fry well for 4-5 minutes. 
5. Remove from heat and let it cool. Add cut coriander on it, mix and make small balls (vadas) of potato mixture. These are called Keep aside.
6. In one bowl take gram flour, add a little turmeric powder,  asafoetida(hing), chili powder ( 1 teaspoon), and salt in it.  Add some water, mix, and make a thick paste. 
7. Now heat oil in a pan. Once it is heated properly, dip potato balls in gram flour paste and then put them in oil to fry. Fry till it becomes golden yellow in color from all sides. 
8. Give cut to the white bread buns  (pav) in the middle, apply butter inside and outside of the bread, and toast on the pan. 
9. Serve fried potato vadas with toasted bread, green chilies, and cut onion.