Coconut Shrimp Curry and Shrimp in Trees

Sri Lankan Entree

COCONUT SHRIMP CURRY

INGREDIENTS

3 garlic cloves
1½” ginger root
2 small green chiles
1 medium onion
1 small tomato
12 fresh curry leaves
1 teaspoon dry curry leaves, or curry powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cinnamon stick
4 teaspoons curry powder
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon turmeric
1½ tablespoons lime juice
1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk
1¼ pounds shrimp (about 24 count)

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves, ginger root, green chiles, and onion. Dice tomato. Add garlic, ginger, chiles, curry leaves, onion, and oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato, cinnamon stick, curry powder, red pepper flakes, salt, and turmeric. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add lime juice and coconut milk. Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes or until coconut milk thickens. Stir frequently. Add shrimp. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 4 minutes or until shrimp turns orange or pink.

TIDBITS

1) The grass that cows eat affects the taste of butter that is made from their milk. Indeed, butter from Isigny Sainte Mère is the best tasting in the world. Why? The area’s rich pastures are chock full of mineral salts and just the right traces for buttery excellence.

2) Shrimp cooked in coconut milk tastes great. So, of course, shrimp vendors tried feeding coconut milk to these little crustaceans. But expecting shrimp to climb up trees and crack open the coconuts resulted in disappointment. Nothing happened even when they put the shrimp in trees. Of course! Shrimp can’t breathe out of water. The shrimpers tried planting coconut trees in water. It turned out that coconuts trees don’t grow in water. The once plucky entrepreneurs gave up the whole idea. Now we’ll never know if shrimp could have been trained to extract milk from coconuts.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef