What a condiment for my sea-food guests!

Wednesday is set aside for marketing by me and my neighbours. That day, we go to the local markets where people throng to sell their wares from mobile phones to fresh food including fresh vegetables, fruits even poultry, meat and fish. It is so crowded that people push you ahead if you stand in one place too long.

My neighbours love fish and even though I am vegetarian, I don’t mind to accompanying them to the fish stalls simply because I love the looks on their faces as they sample all the different varieties of fish till they finalise their buys.

And in that, I finally realised that I was the ‘reluctant’ owner of prawns… the best ones I was told; all part of some deal between my neighbours and the fisher folk. So, after I got it home, I wondered what to do of it till I remembered my own post of pickling and brining here on my blog. I set to work.

Prawns pickle 

Ingredients:

250 gms prawns cleaned

2 tbsp of Kashmiri Chilli powder

2 tbsp of garam masala (if it is homemade then the taste is accentuated)

2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

1 tsp of turmeric powder

1 tsp of crushed pepper

1 tsp of tamarind paste (I use the fresh tamarind grown in my home garden in Kerala see in picture)

Pinch of nutmeg powder

Salt to taste (rock salt is the best)

6 cloves of chopped (into 3 round pieces) garlic 

Sprig of curry leaves

1 tbsp of Nigella seeds (also called kalonji seeds)

2 tbsp vinegar

2 tbsp of mustard oil

Method: For best taste use an earthenware pot. The older the earthenware pot, the better the taste... so don't be put off by the color in the picture. 

1. Mix the prawns, chilli powder, garam masala, ginger garlic paste, turmeric powder, pepper, tamarind and salt and about 1 tbsp of vinegar and leave to marinate for about an hour.
2. Put the marinate mix into the earthenware pot, add the chopped garlic and cook on low flame for about 5-7 minutes. You will see water oozing and the prawns will cook. Once you feel that the prawns have semi-cooked (it should be around 5-7 minutes after you started cooking), turn the flame on high so that the rest of the water evaporates and the masala is all around the prawns. If you have used fresh tamarind, remove the piece now.
3. Take a frying pan and pour the 1 tbsp mustard oil into it. Add the curry leaves and Nigella seeds and then shallow fry the prawns till all the water is gone.
4. Allow to cool and pour it into a glass container greased with mustard oil. Add the remaining vinegar and 1 tbsp of mustard oil on top.
5. Take it out every day for the next 5 days and check for any water formation. If so, shallow fry in high flame in mustard oil. Else you can just put in a dash of mustard oil if your pickle appears dry.
6. After 5 days, your pickle is ready to serve. Always store in lower part of fridge.

Serve with parathas or rotis or plain chapattis or even with simple rice. If your family and many of your friends are sea-food lovers as mine definitely are, then this is going to be a super-hit during meals.

If your guests are apprehensive of ‘hot’ chillies as most of my young guests are, while marinating, add about a tbsp of jaggery.