After reading a post by the lovely Kelly-Jane at Cooking the Books who did a quick curry with real spices a la Nigel Slater, I wanted a quick curry (most definitely using a jar of paste though). The boys had already eaten as we'd had a lovely impromptu afternoon at a friends house, (Thank you K for the lovely cold glass of white, nice chat and feeding the boys.) This was after I'd had a fantastic lunch with some very old friends (Thank you C & M). After such a lovely day I didn't want to COOK cook so I googled Australian Curry and was led to this article. The Australians Women's Weekly - Inspired but still unable to follow a recipe, I then did my own thing.Lazy Girls Prawn and Spinach Curry
One bag of uncooked frozen king prawns (rinsed in water but still frozen)
Half a large onion which was lurking in the fridge - finely chopped
1 sachet of Bart's creamed coconut (Now selling them in 4 x handy 50g sachets)
Half a carton of cream (left over from Bill's scrambled eggs)
3 tablespoons of Patak's mild curry paste
3 huge handfuls of young spinach leaves
Big punch of parsley (didn't have any coriander) - finely chopped (& obviously I meant bunch)
Tablespoon of sunflower oil
Half a mug of boiling water
Fried the onions in the oil until nicely browned. Added the boiling water to get the brown bits off the bottom of the pan (for flavour and it would have made a mess of the pan).Added the curry paste, cream and coconut milk. Warmed through until coconut milk had melted then added prawns, cooked for 2 minutes, then added spinach leaves, put a lid on and cooked for a further 5 minutes. Hubby and I decided it was the best curry we've had in ages.
Cooking under the influence - food to drink to by Ben Canaider and Greg Duncan Powell. This book is great. I've had it for ages, but again never cooked anything from it. I thought I wouldn't cook anything from it while we did Australia but the more I look at it, the more I'm compelled to try something. The writing is fun and I love the drinking notes. No snobby wine critic offerings just plain fun suggestions. Lots of the recipes also have a tips + tricks + tabletalk bit to the side. Some of which are very funny indeed. It's a good book! They probably behave a bit 'men behaving badly' but I reckon it would be a fun evening to have dinner with the writers and their ladies.
