Saturday, June 20, 2009

Southern Indian Prawn Curry - Dinner and a Movie - Monsoon Wedding


Colour, flavour and texture - don't we all love this in our food? This month's
Dinner and a Movie film, Monsoon Wedding, offers plenty of colour, texture and flavour with its Indian backdrop and interwoven storylines involving some very complex relationships between the members and staff of a Punjabi family preparing for a wedding.

Marc of
No Recipes is our Dinner and a Movie host this month, and I loved his choice of movie. I had never seen Monsoon Wedding before, and I have to admit that I found it a little slow in the beginning, but once it began to hot up as the wedding came closer, I became engrossed in all the twists and turns of the various story threads woven into the film.

My favourite storyline was one of the peripheral ones, involving a blossoming romance between the family's housekeeper, Alice, and PK Dubey, the wedding planner. Initially, I found Dubey to be a repulsive character, who was not attractive in either personality or looks. However, once he took a shine to Alice, the finer side of Dubey came to the fore, and I found myself egging him on and hoping that Alice would notice and accept his advances.

To correspond with both the Indian ethnicity, the kaleidoscope of colours and complexity of flavours in this film, I chose to make a South Indian Prawn Curry from The Hairy Bikers Ride Again by Dave Myers and Si King.


To make this curry, you will need:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 finely chopped onion
a finely chopped, thumb-sized knob of ginger
2 green chillies, seeded and finely chopped
4 chopped fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons dessicated coconut
500g peeled raw prawns
chopped fresh coriander


Cook the chopped onion in the heated oil in a frying pan until translucent.

Place the ginger, garlic and chilli into the frypan with the onion and cook for around 1 minute, then add the tomatoes, tamarind paste, turmeric and honey and stir until combined. Cook the curry slowly for 10 minutes, then stir through the coconut.

Add the prawns to the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes, and season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the cooked curry with chopped coriander, and serve with rice.



You can check out the
Dinner and a Movie roundup on Marc's blog here.


12 comments:

Emily said...

Is there anything better than curry and rice? I crave it constantly. Yours looks so colorful and delicious. I noticed you used tamarind, which we don't have here, but I love. I'll have to watch this movie sometime. Sounds great!

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

That looks delicious! I always mean to participate in this as I love the idea of it :)

Finla said...

I love the hairy bikers and lydaughter love and adore both of them.
Prawn curry looks yumm, i can vouch for it s i am from S.India :-)

Cakelaw said...

Thanks Em. Bill Granger in Feed Me Now suggests lime juice as a substitute for tamarind. Not sure how big the diffrence in flavour would be, but is worth a go.

Thanks Lorraine, I am enjoying it because I get to watch so many good movies that I had never seen before. (I watched Moonstruck even though I didn't get time to do a dish for it.)


Thanks Happy Cook, it is good to hear that the Bikers are giving us authentic dishes :)

Unknown said...

the curry sounds delicious. i am all about loads of flavors and textures :)

i can't believe i haven't watched monsoon wedding! it sounds like a very interesting movie...i'll look it up :)

Anonymous said...

I love curry and I loved that that movie. Sounds like a great dinner.

Cakelaw said...

Hi Rita, I have enjoyed reading all about your wonderful, flavoursome dishes. Glad you like this one.

Thanks Wendy.

Zabeena said...

Love curry, love prawns, love the Hairy Bikers! I want to tuck in right now!!

Cakelaw said...

Hi Wendy, it was delicious :)

LOL Zabeena - thanks.

Anonymous said...

Sounds wonderful--you just can't beat Indian food. What a beautiful, vibrant color; it must have danced in your mouth!

Cakelaw said...

Thanks Pastry Chef - 'twas delish.

Anony-miss said...

it looks lovely..

may I suggest "kuch kuch hota hai" or "life in a metro" which are some popular movies worth watching along with the fab indian dinners..