A Stew That Became a Curry: Tiger Prawn & Shellfish, Start to Finish | Episode 4

It's a very home-style sort of a dish. I remember being in Portugal and one of my friend's mum did exactly this and I thought it was such a good way of getting maximum flavour out of this shellfish stock. So all the shells and the head are in this. Simply blitz it. I don't have any fancy restaurant equipment at home, just like to cook with the basic stuff. You know, imagine making a fish stock but with a few Indian ingredients in there. I'm going to put some dry red chilli. Maybe I'll put a few black peppercorns in there as well. I love the flavour of peppercorns. A bit of oil. Just roughly chopped onion. You can leave the skins on. Garlic. I'll also get a few pieces of ginger in there. Black peppercorns. Nice to have a bit of tomato for the acidity as well. Add to the spice. Let's get that in. A couple of them. Stock's not fussy at all, you know. If you're thinking, oh it takes a long time to make a stock, it really doesn't. I think it's just such an easy way to get more flavour into your dish. It's all blitzed up. This goes in here. Don't add any water yet. Give it a mix. Let it cook for a while and then we can decide how much water we want to add. These are all my mum's recipes. These are like family recipes that she's written. It's all vegetarian mostly. And then you'll see some of my writing which is really bad. So I'm not going to add too much water because I want a slightly more concentrated flavour of the fish stock. So we'll just let that boil whilst we make the base. So let me talk you through all the ingredients that are going into this. I'm going to slice some onions. Lots of chopped tomatoes. Julienne. Ginger, quite a lot of it. Green mango for acidity. And I'll throw in a few chillies. Spice levels are totally up to you. If you want to make it more spicy, more chilli. Less spicy, less chilli. This is a spice mix that I made. It's quite a nice fragrant sort of spice mix. Got a hot pan. Bit of sunflower oil or any neutral oil. Into that goes a few fenugreek seeds. So with Indian food, usually we like to balance the bitterness, sweetness, sourness and saltiness. So that's the principle of cooking that we follow in India on a general note. So they're going to start crackling. In with the chillies and the julienne ginger. And then in with the sliced onions. So we're not trying to brown the onions. Actually reduce the heat and let them cook gently. I'm also going to add the green mango. Release all that sourness from them. I'm going to add a bit of seasoning. I just like to season food as we go. A couple of teaspoons of very hot dry red chilli. Ground coriander seeds. So the reason we're adding these spices now is so they cook really well with the tomatoes and the onions and the ginger. So if you don't cook your spice as well, it tends to taste really raw when the dish is finished. Put a lid on, let the tomatoes soften. Give it a few minutes and we'll come back to it. You want to see all the pickles I make at home. That's chilli pickle. Delicious. Garlic and bitter gourd pickle. This one I made with my mum. Maybe we can have it with our lunch. There you go. The tomatoes are really soft now. I think it's a beautiful colour inside. So now I'm going to start adding the stock to it. Also with shellfish or fish stock, you tend to not boil it for over 20 minutes. I'm trying to get as much flavour as possible out of this. Just have to be careful. There's a little hole in my sieve. So you see that forms the base. I'm going to just let this reduce for about five minutes and then we're going to add a bit of tamarind for acidity and some coconut milk for sweetness and flavour. I'm going to let it boil and reduce. Wait for the oil to start floating on top and then finally we'll finish it off with the prawns. No real trick to this. I think I may do the big ones first and then get the little ones in. There we go. So these little prawns will only take less than five minutes to cook. Gently and slowly so they don't overcook and they don't get tough. Get a lid on and let it stew away for a few minutes and then we're done. I think it's ready. Do you want to come and have a look? It's delicious. So this is best served with a very simple flatbread called chapati. Every part of India will have a chapati in their house. It's a very simple dough of wholemeal flour, water, a bit of oil and salt. That's it. This dough was made earlier today. So I'm just rolling them into little balls. Often people think it's really hard to make flatbread at home but it's super simple. I'll show you how easy it is to make. Dip it in flour and then we'll just roll them like a pizza. So the goal is to keep the thickness even throughout the bread so it rises evenly. It's going to go into a hot pan. Half cooking the base and then we'll flip it over, fully cook it and then we'll flip it back. So you see the bubbles are starting to bubble up a little bit. So I'm going to turn it over. See that's half cooked right now. We're waiting for the other side to fully cook now. Half cook, full cook and then fully cook. So at this point you press it, it puffs up. See that? Simple. You can take it off. Very good. I'm going to sprinkle some fresh coriander for a bit of crunch.