For someone who has spent the past five years doing the same job, the kind where you have “vacation days” but when you take them you’re consumed with guilt about how many of them you are stringing together and people raise their eyebrows when you say you’ll be gone for 10 days, I have an incredible amount of wanderlust. It’s exhausting to be in the same place for so long. So when real adventure isn’t an option, I can take a trip to Goa for an hour on a Tuesday after work.
I have not yet been to India besides an unfortunate 12-hour transit through the Delhi airport, but the country is very, very high on my pretty expansive “to do” list of places to visit. Over the years I’ve enjoyed getting to know its regions through food, which varies from the spiced meats in the north to the rich dishes further south, to coconut-based curries along the coast. I’m of the opinion that you can add coconut milk to pretty much anything and it will become delicious.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have an extensive spice collection, and I always keep some key items in my pantry, including every canned product a coconut can make. Which means that to make this dish, I needed to buy one thing and one thing only, which was shrimp. And I’ll admit that I even took this a step further into lazy man’s territory and I bought cleaned and deveined shrimp. It’s a meal that’s as hassle-free as it gets, not to mention absolutely delicious.
I can’t speak to this dish’s authenticity- paprika is not a typical ingredient in Indian food but it’s a chili relative so I can’t imagine it being too far off- but it serves up a complexity you would not expect from a dish so simple in ingredients and technique. It’s definitely spicy so be careful with your paprika if you prefer something milder. I’d recommend serving this alongside a bowl of piping hot Jasmine rice and maybe some sliced raw cucumbers and carrots to cool your mouth off.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil
- 2 finely chopped medium shallots
- 1/4 teaspoon or more cayenne pepper, as preferred
- 2 teaspoons paprika (I think either hot or sweet would work, depending on your preference)
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 1/4 cups coconut milk from a well-shaken can
- 1 pound large or medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (or 12 ounces peeled and deveined shrimp)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1-2 teaspoons lemon or lime juice
Instructions
- Pour the oil into a frying pan or sauté pan and set over medium heat. When hot, put in the shallots. Stir and fry until they turn light brown. Take the pan off the heat and add the cayenne, paprika, black pepper and turmeric. Stir once or twice and put the pan back on the heat. Add the coconut milk and bring to a simmer, stirring to mix. Turn heat to low. Put in the shrimp, salt and lemon or lime juice. Stir and cook on low heat until the shrimp just turn opaque.
Notes
https://www.thekitchenchronicles.com/2014/09/29/goan-shrimp-curry/
