Coconut Prawn Curry

I finally got my hands on a copy of The Hairy Bikers book "The Hairy Dieters".  I think it was one of the hardest books to track down - EVER but eventually I got a copy via The Book People for the bargain price of £4.99.  There's quite a few things in the book that I'd like to make but the first thing I made was the Coconut Prawn Curry.

I was looking for something that was a) tasty, b) easy and c) quick and this fitted the bill. I adapted the recipe somewhat from the original so what you find below are my little tweaks rather than the original recipe. The curry that resulted didn't resemble the one in The Hairy Bikers book at all! Mine is also not diet-friendly as I don't use half-fat coconut milk like The Hairy Bikers do, I'm a full fat kind of girl (my waistline will back me up on this...) but obviously if you want it to be lower fat, than you can change this.

The recipe serves 2-3 but could be bumped up even more by adding a bit of extra vegetables to it. It's rather wet due to the amount of coconut milk I put into the dish (The Hairy Bikers used half the amount) but I just drained off the excess when serving it up - should have bottled it really, it was yum!

Coconut Prawn Curry

Ingredients

2 tbsp Keralan curry paste

2 tbsp cold water

1 medium onion, halved and finely sliced

1 orange pepper, deseeded and cut into small chunks

1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into small chunks

1 tbsp mango chutney

4 tomatoes, quartered, deseeded and diced

400ml coconut milk

2 tsp cornflour

200g cooked king prawns

100g baby spinach leaves

Method

In a large non-stick frying pan or wok, cook the curry paste, 1 tbsp water, onion and diced peppers over a low heat for around 5 minutes. Stir regularly to prevent sticking, until the onion has started to soften.

Add the mango chutney, diced tomatoes and coconut milk to the pan and bring to a simmer. Cook for around 4 minutes, stirring every now and again until the tomatoes are just beginning to soften. 

Mix the cornflour with the rest of the water to make a smooth paste and add to the sauce in the pan. Cook for around a minute, stirring all the time until the sauce thickens slightly.

Add the prawns to the pan along with the baby spinach leaves and cook for a couple of minutes until the prawns are hot through and the spinach has wilted. 

Serve immediately with some steam white rice and a nice hot naan bread!

I used the Keralan curry paste that Waitrose make however if you can't find that one use any medium-heat curry paste that you can find. The Pataks Jalfrezi paste would also work well with this dish.