Ameena Alam’s Chingri Bhorta

I am always on the lookout for exquisite recipes. You know, those family treasures which you never find in cookbooks. And I am glad I have a set of people who always indulge me. So I wanted a rui recipe, and ended up making Ameena’s Chingri Bhorta, a spicy mash of tiger shrimps. That’s how much I love my chingri. And now second to the shrimps, its the owner of this recipe – Ameena Alam that I love!

Ingredients for Ameena Alam’s Chingri Bhorta are:

400 grams tiger shrimps, deveined and cleaned, cut into small pieces
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 thumb-size piece of ginger, finely chopped
2-3 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Few sprigs of coriander, finely chopped
5-6 green chillies, slit lengthwise
5-6 dry red chillies
3 + 2 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Start by heating mustard oil in a pan. Add the dry red chillies, ginger and garlic in it and sauté them on medium flame till the ginger-garlic become soft. Do not brown them.

Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to your blender’s jar. In the remaining oil, add the shrimps. Cook them till they turn pink. Remove from heat and add to the blender jar with the other ingredients. Make sure you scrape the oil if any from the pan into the jar.

Use the pulse mode in your blender or “mixie” to create an uneven consistency of the ingredients. Its okay for some of the shrimps, red chillies, ginger or garlic to remain chunky. That’s the idea of this bhorta.

Transfer the shrimps in a bowl, add the chopped onions, coriander, sliced green chillies, salt and add a good drizzle of extra virgin mustard oil, about two tablespoons.

Mash everything together and serve while the bhorta is still warm. Preferably with mushurir dal and bhaat.

Thank you, Ameena! Your Chingri Bhorta became an instant hit with the husband and I.

Chingri Kaliakari or Malaikalia, Its the Mother of Prawns Anyway!

So my Mum’s hybrid version of this chingri dish created some kind of buzz with my readers.

What was made by my Mum as an inventive, something-in-between a Kalia and a Malaikari turned out to be this head-turning stunner. We had it during our trip to India last month, and I was completely stumped by the way it teased me with its rich and silken taste, both at the same. I asked Mum, “What do you call this dish?” She said, “Its a no-name chingri. Just eat it.”

That was enough titillation for the food writer in me.

So here I am, writing down the recipe for you. Of course the creator of this recipe, my Mum has been adequately consulted about the ingredients and measurements.

Ingredients for Chingri Kaliakari or Malaikalia are:

*Thank you Sharmita Saha for the name suggestion.

12 large tiger shrimps/prawns (Use golda chingri if available)
1 medium size red onion, grated
1 large red, ripe tomato grated
Quarter cup grated fresh coconut (I use the frozen kind)
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 tablespoon garlic paste
1 teaspoon green chilli paste or use 2-3 whole (don't add if kids are eating!)
2 + 1 teaspoons turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
1 teaspoon freshly ground garam masala powder (cinnamon, cloves, green and black cardamoms)
1 or 2 bay
4-5 tablespoons mustard oil
1 heaped tablespoon ghee
Sugar
Salt

Start by deveining and cleaning the heads of the prawns. I kept the tail on to make the shrimps looks pretty! Rub a couple of spoons of turmeric and salt.

Heat mustard oil in a wok. Add the prawns in batches and cook them on each side for a couple of minutes. Once the prawns turn pink, take them off the heat.

In the leftover oil, add half a teaspoon of sugar and let it caramelize. Take care not to burn it.

Add the bay, grated onions, garam masala powder and green chillies and mix. Cover and cook these ingredients on low heat for 7-8 minutes till the onions start turning light brown.

Now add the ginger-garlic paste and continue to cook covered for about five more minutes.

Next add the tomato and coconut, and mix. Add the turmeric and red chilli powder and continue cooking on low heat and covered all the time. It takes about 10-15 minutes of slow cooking for the raw taste to go away from the ingredients.

You will see little oil bubbles around the masala, season with salt and sugar and mix. Add the ghee at this point in time and cook for a couple more minutes.

Its safe to add water to your onion-tomato-coconut masala now. Add about one and a half cups of water and cover. Let this cook for another 7-8 minutes. Make sure you use gentle heat while cooking your masala sauce. We don’t want the onions and coconut to burn and give the dish a bitter taste.

One the gravy comes to a bubbling boil, slide in the prawns one at a time, making sure you don’t separate the heads from the tails.

Cook the prawns on medium heat in the gravy for about 6-7 minutes. Do a taste test and add sugar and salt if needed.

Serve your Prawn Kaliakari or Malaikalia with plain rice. And like most Indian dishes, it tastes even better the next day. In case you have leftover gravy, preserve it in the freezer. On another day, just sauté some shrimps and add to your leftover sauce and cook for 7-8 minutes. Voila! That saves you from all the grating and grinding.

Shrimply Delicious, Chili-Garlic Prawn

Some days are such, I want dinner made under 10 minutes. This does not necessarily mean I pop in the microwave a TV dinner. By now, you know my habit of cooking fresh and homemade and from-the-scratch. Well, its not really a myth to do all that in 10 minutes. Or 20 maybe.

Here is something that will give Rachael Ray a run for her money – my Chili-Garlic Prawn, with an approximate cook time of 10.

Ingredients for Chili-Garlic Prawn are:

10 large shrimps, remove shell, keep tail and devein. I used the black colossal tiger shrimps from St. Lawrence Market.

For the marinade: 
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 heaped tablespoon cornstarch
Pinch of black pepper powder
Pinch of sugar
White of 1 egg

Mix all the above ingredients in a bowl and dunk the shrimps in it. Keep for 20-30 minutes.

For the sauce:
1 medium size onion, yellow or red, cut into quarters and petals separated
5-6 fat cloves of garlic, sliced
3-4 green chilies, sliced
3 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon white vinegar
Pinch of sugar
3+3 tablespoons canola oil

Heat half the oil in a Chinese wok. Remove the prawns from the marinade and shallow fry them in the hot oil, turning them mid way. Give each side of the shrimp about 2-3 minutes in the heat, so that its tail curl up and it turns pink. Do this in batches if your wok is small. Keep them aside.

Start with a clean wok to make the sauce and finish the dish. Heat the remaining oil and add the garlic and green chilies. Sauté for a couple of minutes without turning the garlic brown. Toss in the onions. Sweat them on high for 3-4 minutes.
In a bowl, mix together the tomato ketchup, sambal oelek, soy sauce, and sugar. Pour it on the onions, etc. Give it a good stir and let it cook for 3-4 minutes on high heat. Check the seasoning and adjust accordingly. Add the vinegar. I did not add any salt to my dish as all the sauces have ample salt in them.

Now add the prawns to the sauce. Coat them well, cook for 2-3 minutes in the sauce and turn the heat off. Serve immediately with steamed rice or a fried rice you like.


Now who was keeping the time?

Bengal’s Own, Alu-Begun-Chingri

This is my Mum’s recipe. I love making her recipes because they are simple and easy to execute. The ingredients are readily available even in Canada, and I also get to re-create certain food flavors which have been in my head since childhood.

Though the main ingredients for this recipe are are Potato (Alu), Eggplant/Brinjal (Begun) and Shrimps (Chingri), a whole lot of flavors come from the green chilies (kancha lonka) you add to it. So this Alu-Begun-Chingri is not really for the faint-hearted.

I am not a food snob when buying my groceries. But I am very particular about green chilies. The ones we get in the supermarkets here have no bite to them, so I usually get my fill of green chilies from the Indian stores or Chinatown.

This dish is something between a curry and a sauté, we call the consistency makha-makha in Bengali, where the sauce and the spices cling to the vegetables or meat. It can be eaten with chapatis or dal and plain rice.

Ingredients for Alu-Begun-Chingri are:

400 grams shrimp (I used just the tails, they were largish, size 8-12)
3-4 Oriental eggplants, halved and cut lengthwise
2 medium size potatoes, cut into wedges
1 medium red onion, slivered
2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped (the riper the better!)
7-8 green chilies, slit lengthwise
Generous handful of chopped coriander
One and half tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
3-4 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Heat oil in a large, thick pan. Sauté the onions and green chilies till the onions are still light brown in color.
Then add the potatoes and get some color on them, for another 3-4 minutes. Now add the eggplants and mix well.

Next to add are the turmeric and red chili powder and the ginger-garlic paste. Mix for a minute or two, scraping the spices from the bottom of the pan, all this on medium heat. Add the chopped tomatoes and salt, cover and cook for 3-4 minutes.

The salt will help the tomatoes release their juices which will moisten the other vegetables too. Add the shrimps to the dish and mix again.

Cover for 4-5 minutes on medium heat and cook. Keep checking so that the spices do not burn. Add a cup of water and cover till the potatoes are done. The shrimps will turn pink and the eggplant and tomatoes will become mushy.
Check the seasoning. Turn the heat off if the potatoes are done, else continue cooking for a few more minutes.

Add a generous amount of chopped fresh coriander (leaves and stems) and mix again.

Though I used shrimp tails, you can use whole deveined shrimps or kucho chingri for this recipe. If you are vegetarian and do not eat shrimps, please feel free to omit them and call this dish Alu-Begun!

For more Bengali recipes, photographs and discussions, see The Big Bong Theory.