Prawn Soup

This was an experiment that worked.
(If I give the impression that all my cooking experiments work -- I'm misleading you, lots turn out bad; but I don't blog about them! :))

I just imagined this dish, when I was watching TV. It subtle, kinda chinese/thai like, but at the subtle end of things.
Start with 20-5 super fresh prawns, and separate the heads, and shells from the bodies, deveining the bodies. Boil the heads/shells, in a 1 liter of water, reducing the heat so that its just simmer after you see the first bubbles appear. Add a few cloves of garlic, cleaned, and two or three bombay onions (shallots), cubed. Some whole black pepper corns would be nice.
Marinate the prawns in fish sauce & green chili sauce, adding enough for to coat each one. About a tablespoon of fish sauce and perhaps 1.5 of green chili sauce, and 50ml of sweet vermouth. Taste the marinate. Are the tastes balanced? Add a more sugar and/or salt, if needed.

After about 30 mins (of marinating/simmering), add a little vinegar and fish sauce into the simmer prawn shells/heads. Just a splash. Taste. The sour/salt should be a faint mixure in the background, the foreground being a stronger prawn flavor. Puree the whole liquid thing. Yes, the heads, shells and every thing. It will not trouble your mixure/liquidizer/belnder at all. Strain this, into pan, and bring to a simmer. Add the marinated prawns, for 4 mins.
Take off the heat; you are done.

Lunch at Blanco's (Khan Market, Delhi)

Nivi, Adithya and their son Niru took me out to lunch at this lovely restaurant in Delhi, after the conference. Since I was all done with work as such, and it was the weekend to boot, we started with drinks. I had my favorite vodka martini, but nivi's drink looked tempting also :).


then we had appetizers.
in india, my friends never order the mains with the appetizers. they eat what comes, wait, decide if they want more appetizers, and then if they want more drinks, and then order the entree. its like my school friends here in colombo, when they have bites before dinner. but then they like to go to another place for dinner. i like the delhi system, you don't have to move, after you sit down. :)
the appetizers here were great. the asparagus and wasabi mash wraps were a subtle, yet tangy treat, and the shrimp and pork wraps (a new combo for me), with hot sweet sauce went down very well.



note to self: i should try asparagus wraps at home!



my main dish was grilled salmon, with orange sauce. it was very nice, but not as prefect at the appetizers; mainly the orange sauce being slightly too sweet, and not that citrussy. I prefer the orange reductions I've been working on, that mix sweet, citrus and bitter in a balanced way. But still it was a treat to have salmon.



Then in helpless over indulgence, I had the triple chocolate mousse for dessert. I think it hard to make softer mousse, and have them keep, but I do I prefer this. I must work on chocolate mousses, and see what I can do.




what a lovely lunch it was!

Orange Shrimp, again in Delhi!

Appu, a young friend who lives in Delhi, has been interested in my cooking adventures for some time. Ages ago, he asked me write up a prawn recipe for him; but I didn't get around to it for ever. then, as the food blog got going, i did blog my favorite prawn recipe, which i worked on and tried to improve -- my most recent effort being a new variation with orange sauce and blanched peel. When I posted this link on Appu's facebook wall, he said he'd like me to cook it at his place, when i visited.

And so, it worked out! Appu's mother Mary got the ingredients, (peeled jumbo prawns, and oranges) and did all the preparation, with help from him (Appu was right that the peel had to heavily salted to draw out the bitterness) -- then we cooked it. It took a few hours of intensive work ( we were cooking for 10-12, and I'd never made the dish to this scale before), and reduction of the prawn sauce and organge juice was a challenge but the results were pretty good. The major error I made was blanching to peel to long, (it should be 30 secs., not 3 mins) so it didn't have its super citrus burst, but then that was a good lesson for me!
also i learnt about a new kitchen aid utensil while cooking, with Mary and Appu -- a steel grip, which comes in very handy, with hot dishes and pans, that eliminates the need for bulky paw pads! A few days later, Mary and Satish gifted me a beautifully wrapped one of my own.




















Thank you!

Orange Shrimp, with blanched peel

it struck me, some months ago, when i got my basic grilled shrimp right to my satisfaction, that i might want to figure out another way to make shrimp or prawns. so i've been working on an orange variation, which has progressed quite well. i start with a shrimp/prawn sauce, that i've described in a previous post, linked up above. when its plain grilled shrimp i'm making, i some times add some thai fish sauce, or anchovies into the shrimp stock, which is basically made of the shells and tails (either boiled down in water/wine or pressure cooked, pureed, and strained). for the orange variation, i hold the fish sauce/anchovies and add an equal amount of orange juice (sugarless; fresh squeezed would be best, of course), as it reduces. reduce this until its thick. marinate the shrimp in that, with crushed garlic, and chilli pieces for a few hours or over night, in a cold fridge.

slice the peel of an orange -- and its best to pull off the flesh with your hands in a smooth motion, one quarter at time (i prized it out with a knife this time, and it was too thick, but i have done this right before) -- into the thinnest silvers you can manage and adds loads of table salt, (yes loads), and keep it in a separate dish as the shrimp marinades.
when you are ready to cook, grilled the shrimp, still in the marinade, for about 6 mins under a very hot grill, adding olive oil and butter before you start. wash out the salted peel several times, and blanch, (that is boil in water) for 3 mins or so. add fresh squeeze of orange over the shrimp, and then add drained peel as garnish on top.
i didn't even do it right this, and it was still very very good. the value added is worth it; the strong, burst in your mouth citrus of the blanched peel, with the slightly sweet, very savory shrimps, inflected with two flavors of orange, fresh and reduced. I had this is with toasted bread, and a bottle of beer, and I am feeling very good, thankee!

And I fixed this again, in Delhi at the end of Feb, 2009, with Appu & Mary's help.

Dinner at Elibank

On Thursday, in pursuit food critique, I had a small dinner party - just two people, Jehan and Radhika— who thought they might enjoy my cooking, and comment on the new dishes I’ve been working on.

We started with grilled prawns, which I’ve been working on for awhile.
This time, I marinated the prawns in a prawns sauce, that I made with prawn shells and prawns, boiled for 20 mins, then pureed strained, boiled down again, until it halved, then blended, with a little olive oil, quite a lot of chili pieces and Thai fish sauce. I let the prawns sit in the marinate overnight, adding fresh pressed garlic, a tiny bit more oil, and pats of unsalted butter, right before grilling for 6 mins. (1.30 + 4.30, combo1 + grill) I think they were good; I may just declare this dish done!

The main course was pan roasted pork medallions, with a pineapple/wasabi glaze. Now, this is part of my pork roast extravaganza, that has been going on all month and I think just in time for Vesak, it may well have come to an end! Pan roasting the pork, works better in a way that oven roasting the whole cut, even though of course, nicely done dry roast has its own flavor, which is not what pan roasted gets you to. But its so much easier to manage in a way. I marinated the sliced (3/4 inch) pork in salted ( 2 teaspoons to 0.75 l --that's 3 cups) unsweetened pineapple juice over night. Then, I used a cup of the marinade, with a cup of fresh juice, and another of diced pineapples, for the base of the reduction, boiling that down, until the pineapple was soft, then pureeing it, and reducing until thick. That’s 30 odd mins of boring, hot work — but this time, I didn’t burn it! Adding wasabi to taste is easy, right at the end, once the pork has been pan roasted in medium heat for about 7 mins., total. Since I use cast iron pans, I just popped it in the oven ( at 5) for about 10 mins also, to giving it that dry roast tinge. May be that worked; but the pork was soft, succulent even, and glaze was done right. My guests suggested that I add a little unmixed wasabi on the side, which I agreed I should have. I should remember next time! The medallions were served over mashed potatoes with pepper, and iceberg lettuce, undressed, scalded spring onion shoots and pineapple slivers. Jehan suggested that the spring onions be slit, some thing Ritu also suggested, some months ago when I made a soup — but in the main, both my guests thought the glazed worked well the pork, and was well blended. I had the dish earlier in the day, when I did a trail run, and yes, I was pleased!

For desserts, and yes there was dessert; we had what called a Strawberry Bomb, soon, when its worked out to perfection to be called, Strawberry Orgasm. I’ve been on a strawberry trend for a few weeks now, so no surprises there, I guess. The base of this, is a strawberry vodka jelly, made with sweetened pureed strawberries, reduced to a cup, blended with a 1/3 cup of vodka, and jelled. On top is sweetened whipped cream, Red Man, again, and Strawberries one of which I embedded in the cream, and the others served on a small side dish. This is a dish you have to work on, dipping your strawberries in cream, waiting for zingy—tangy melt in your mouth vodka jelly below.

Grilled Garlic Shrimp

Grilled Garlic Shrimp
Originally uploaded by pradeep jeganathan.

i've been working on this dish for ever. at least four years. the classic way of doing it gives a sharp, strong flavor that lots of sri lankans like -- (that's garlic, chilli pieces, olive oil and butter) -- but i've been trying to improve on that.
in this variation, i marinated the shrimp in a puree of shrimp (2 to a cup of dry vermouth) boiled down with anchovies (4 small ones to the cup). after letting it sit in the marinade, i added the chilli, butter and for the olive oil, i used what was in the anchovy can.

it was good, but i am not sure its right. (:

Garlic Shrimp

It wasn’t the perfect dish, but it a start of some thing.
The grilled garlic shrimp, with olive oil and chopped red chilies was alright, but that’s easy.
I added sun dried tomatoes in a shrimp/arrack reduction, with a kithul hakuru/balsamic vinegar balance, but that over powered the shrimp sauce. So I need to re-do that.
The green beans were just blanched in boiling water, and were a very crisp counterpoint to the shrimp.