Prawn Head Rasam

I salivate over Her recipes and photographs and keep planning a rasam or a sambhar every few days but end up junking the idea in favor of my 2 minute recipes.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, I got prawns for dinner. While my fishmonger was deveining the prawns, he asked me if he should leave the heads on. Now, that is a dilemma for me. I love eating seafood messily and gnawing and sucking on the prawn heads for the tasty custard (brains?? heeehee) that in my opinion is the best part of the prawn. So I asked the fishmonger to take off the heads and keep them separately. When I got back home, I rang up my sister for recipes and she suggested I make a stock out of them. I wasn't entirely satisfied with that and decided to make a spicy rasam out of them, in order to satisfying my soup and spice craving.

Ingredients

Prawn heads (or whole prawns)
Tomato 2 large diced
Onion 2 large diced
Garlic 2 cloves (Has anyone noticed how garlic heavy my food tends to be?)
Ginger 1/2 inch julienned
Green chillies 3 chopped
Red chilli powder 1 teaspoon
Tamarind 1 medium sized ball
Sugar 1 teaspoon (may be eliminated, but I like a faint sweet undercurrent to my rasams)
Salt to taste
Water about 2 glasses

Tadka

Mustard seeds
Oil
Curry leaves
Dried red chillies

Method

In a pan, heat oil. Put mustard seeds in and when they start crackling add onion, curry leaves, garlic, ginger and dried red chillies. When the onion turns translucent, add tomato, green chillies, salt, sugar, tamarind and red chilli powder. When the tomatoes turn tender, add water and boil until the mixture looks sauce-like. Add prawn heads and boil for another 4 minutes. Serve hot.



The photo is again crap, but it was v. comforting to chew on the prawn heads and drink the hot tangy rasam on the cold winter evening.