Fish Head & Prawn (Fresh Curry Leaves Curry)

The earliest known recipe for meat in spicy sauce with bread appeared on tablets found near Babylon in Mesopotamia, written in cuniform text as discovered by the Sumerians, and dated around 1700 B.C., probably as an offering to the god Marduk.

(Wikepedia) "Curry is the English description of any of a general variety of spiced dishes, best-known in Bangladeshi, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani,Thai, and other South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines, though curry has been adopted into all of the mainstream cuisines of the Asia-Pacific region. Along with tea, curry is one of the few dishes or drinks that is truly "Pan-Asian", but specifically, its roots come from India. The concept of curry was later brought to the West by British colonialists in India from the 18th century. Dishes that are often classified as curries in Europe and America are rarely called curries in the native language".

Then, in Richard II’s reign (1377-1399) the first real English cookery book was written. Richard employed 200 cooks and they, plus others including philosophers, produced a work with 196 recipes in 1390 called ‘The Forme of Cury’. ‘Cury’ was the Old English word for cooking derived from the French ‘cuire’ - to cook, boil, grill - hence cuisine.

Now that we just had a brief history lesson on curry let's cook fish head & prawn curry...with no coconut milk by the way. Well most curry's use coconut milk..in this case am not using any since i personally don't mix too well with coconut milk....instead i use tomato sauce to thicken the gravy.

INGREDIENTS :

• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 cup fish stock
• Fresh curry leaves
• Fresh Ginger (Finely minced)
• 5 Garlic Cloves (minced not crushed)
• Salt
• Crushed pepper corns
• Medium Prawns
• Lady Fingers
• 1 Tomato
• Curry Powder

To start heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a clay pot (i love to use clay pots when cooking stews since the cooking heat is even and constant with clay pots) fry the minced ginger, garlic and fresh curry leaves, add some salt to flavor..fry to bring out the taste of the fresh curry to blend with ginger and garlic...till translucent.

Pour in your fish stock an tomato sauce and bring to a boil, add the chopped fresh tomato, and curry powder and continue to boil in medium heat till stock thickens.

When the fresh tomato chunks has been partly dissolved...add the fish head to the gravy and let simmer for 15 minutes.. ( my personal choice of fish head parts is grouper (Garupa) or Red Snapper)



after your fish heads are cooked just nice ..... add the Lady fingers and Prawns, let it simmer for about another 2 minutes and you curry is ready to serve...yumm yumm

for the avid curry lover i'd recommend you try this recipe....its just exotically heavenly.