Thai Green Prawn Curry

I really enjoyed making (and eating!) this amazing thai curry. I got the original recipe from "Jamie Oliver's Ministry of food", and as I was cooking made a few changes to make it my own. I reduced then amount of coconut milk used - I found about 200ml was plenty! Of course feel free to add more - that's the beauty of cooking, you can mess around with ingredients until the taste is perfect for you :) I also added parsley, as I think it gives the dish a wonderful fresh flavour!

Serves two, or one very greedy person!


Ingredients

300-400g prawns

Small bunch of Asparagus
1 small red chilli
1 tbsp groundnut oil
200ml coconut milk
handful of mangetout
1 lime

2 stalks of lemongrass
4 spring onions
3 fresh green chillis
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp of powdered ginger OR
1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger
small bunch Coriander leaves
Fresh Parsley
1 tsp Coriander seeds
3 tbps soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce

The first thing to do is to peel your prawns if you bought them whole. I was pretty grossed out by this at first; the eyes were staring at me, argh! To peel a prawn, grab hold of it's head, twist, and pull it off. Do the same with the tail. To remove the legs and shell, hold onto the legs and gently 'unwrap' the prawn. It;s easy once you get used to it (and in my case, once I got past the eyes!)

Trim the ends off the lemongrass, and peel of the outer layer. This is the 'woodiest' part, and should come away pretty easy. crush the stalks a few times by bashing them with a rolling pin - DONT do what I did and use the handle of a knife! (almost chopped off my fingers) De-seed and chop the green chilli's, and chop the spring onions, garlic, ginger, coriander and parsley. Chuck everything except the prawns into a blender and blend away!
Add the soy sauce and fish sauce to the mix. Blend again until the paste is smooth.

Snap off the bottom bits of the asparagus - these are known as the "woody" ends and should come away quite easily! Chop them in half lengthways. Place a large pan or wok onto a high heat, and add the groundnut oil. When it's really hot, drop in the prawns. Add the asparagus and the blended paste, and stir for about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the coconut milk and the mangetout - bring to the boil and stir for a bit. Chop the lime in half and squeeze into the sauce to taste - I used almost a whole one :)

Serve on top of rice! Finely chop the red chilli and sprinkle over the meal. Eat whilst it's hot!