Golden shrimp with sweet spicy sauce
I recently made this as part of a dinner party where I served all dishes I had never made before. It’s adapted from a recipe in the cookbook “Authentic Recipes from Singapore” by David Wong and Djoko Wibisono, a great book which I plan to use more often.
Galangal is a root used in Southeast Asian cooking. It gives this dish a delicious citrusy edge.
Since some of my guests couldn’t handle very spicy food, I substituted a dash of cayenne pepper for the 5-7 fresh chilies originally called for.
Ingredients
- 1 lb headless shrimp
- 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- Flour for dusting
- Oil for deep-frying
Sweet spicy sauce
- 3/4 inch fresh galangal root, peeled and sliced
- 1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
- 3 shallots, peeled
- 5 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1 tbsp oil
- dash of cayenne pepper or to taste
- 5 tbsp palm sugar syrup (see below) or honey
- 2 tbsp lime juice, or to taste
Palm sugar syrup
- To prepare palm sugar syrup, bring 1/2 cup shaved palm sugar (I used brown sugar) and 1/2 cup of water to boil in a small saucepan. Then reduce the heat and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes until the liquid thickens and becomes syrupy.
Prepare and marinate shrimp
Peel and devein the shrimp. Place in a bowl, add the lime juice, salt and pepper and mix well. Set aside for 10 minutes.
Deep-fry the shrimp
Lift each shrimp out of the marinade and dredge in flour. Heat the oil in a wok and deep-fry for 1-2 minutes until golden. Remove from the oil and set aside to drain.
Make the sweet spicy sauce
To make the sweet spicy sauce, grind the galangal, ginger, shallots and garlic to a paste in a mortar or blender, adding a little oil or water if necessary to make the mixture blend better. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat and stir-fry the paste for 5-8 minutes, until fragrant. Add the remaining sauce ingredients, reduce the heat and simmer until it thickens, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. When cooled, grind the sauce in a blender for a few seconds.
Combine the shrimp and sauce
Toss the prawns in the sweet spicy sauce until well coated and serve.
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