Seafood At Home


My roommate and I had this sudden urge for seafood, on Christmas Eve. Not wanting to shell out millions at our local seafood joint with its inflated Christmas rates, we decided to create something at home - the job of creating ceremoniously dumped on me!

I was thinking easy yet exotic, but no inspiration came. Since it was getting late, I asked my roommate to go and buy some fresh lobsters and king prawns.

Since the fisher-boy was about to wrap up for the day, he was aching to get rid of just those! My roommate got us tons of prawns and six nice, juicy lobsters for merely the equivalent of $6!

I decided to just start out cooking them and improvise as the ideas came in. Here's what I created:

Golden Prawns in Pumpkin Sauce

Ingredients

For the prawns...

1 kg king or tiger prawns
2 cups bread crumbs
1 tbsp. honey
1 lemon
2 tbsp. ginger paste
2 tbsp. garlic paste
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp. red chilly powder
Oil for deep-fry

For the sauce...

1 cup ripe pumpkin pureed
2 tsp. vinegar
3 tsp. sugar
A pinch of salt

Method

Shell the prawns. If your fisher-person shells them for you, it becomes less time-consuming. We have to marinate the prawns.

For the marinade, set the prawns on a large dish. Add the ginger / garlic pastes, the red chilly powder, salt and pepper, honey and lemon. Now, with your hand, mix all the ingredients until and even layer of the marinade is formed over the prawns. Hazard a taste of the marinade. Add whatever you feel is missing. Also, add anything you think will be good, on the spur of the moment! Let it sit for ten minutes.

While that's happening, get your bread crumbs on to a large, flat dish. Pour oil into your wok and put it on high flame. When it gets hot, grab a prawn by the tail, dip it in the breadcrumbs to get an even layer and let it fry. Put in only about three or four prawns at a time, depending on the size of your wok. We don't want too many in there as they tend to stick to eachother and also, they take longer to fry. That's it!

Now, if you're too lazy to make the pumpkin sauce, or sweet sauces just aren't your style, mix some tomato ketchup and chilly sauce in a bowl and start to eat. Or simply dip the prawns in a mayo-mustard mix and they're equally scrumptious! But, pumpkin sauce is pumpkin sauce and here's how you make it.

The copyright of the article Seafood At Home in Recipes for Beginner Cooks is owned by Viraj Talpade. Permission to republish Seafood At Home in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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