This recipe may sound a little strange. It is a dessert made from shrimp on a base of (non-spicy) curried rice. A common Thai dish, but the ingredients are not common to desserts!

Ingredients  for Yellow Rice
100 gms Sticky Rice
1-2 Teaspoons Tumeric
200 ml Coconut Milk
150 gms Sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt

Ingredients  for Sweet Shrimp
100 gms Shrimps
2-3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon White Pepper
10 gms Coriander Root or Seeds
100 gms Desiccated (Ground) Coconut
150 gms Sugar
1 Teaspoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Oil
2-3 Drops of Orange Food Colouring
10 gms Sliced Kaffir Leaves for Garnish

Preparation
1. To make the yellow rice, soak the sticky rice in warm water, and tumeric and leave for 4-8 hours.
2. Steam the rice until cooked, (approximately 15 minutes).
3. Place the rice in a bowl, mix with the sugar, salt and coconut milk. Leave it to soak up the coconut milk.
4. Now to the shrimp topping. Clean the shrimp, remove the shell and cut down the back to remove the black thread ‘gut’.
5. Chop the shrimp into a fine mince.
6. Pound the garlic and coriander root/seeds and white pepper together until well ground up.
7. Fry the shrimp and pounded mixture in a frying pan with a little oil until part cooked, 30 seconds or so is fine.
8. Mix the ground coconut with the orange food colouring, add to the frying pan, add the sugar and salt and fry for a further 2 minutes. The sugar will slightly caramelize.
9. Serve a small bowl of the yellow rice with the sweet shrimp on top and garnish with some slices of kaffie lime leaves

This is a dish of scrambled, curried eggs served with shrimp and spring onion. Thailand has China to the north and India to the west and this dish is the Thai merging of those two traditions. Here I’ve used shrimp, you can also use crab and other seafood.

Ingredients  for 2 People
75 gms Shrimp
1 Egg
1 Spring Onion
1 Sprig Coriander
3 Garlic Cloves
1 Teaspoon Curry Powder
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Tablespoons Condensed Milk
2 Tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
4 Tablespoons Oil
50 ml Water

Preparation
1. Chop the garlic and fry in the oil.
2. Clean the shrimp put into frying pan with garlic.
3. Mix the curry powder with the water, sugar, salt, light soy sauce, and oyster sauce, and add to the frying pan.
4. Fry for 1/2 minute.
5. Chop the coriander and spring onion and add to the pan.
6. Scramble the egg and add it to the pan.
7. Add the condensed milk, fry for 2 minutes and serve.

Serve With
Hot Rice or Snacks

Shrimp Sour Curry is a traditional food of Central & Southern Thailand. Think of it as curried soup. Although the ingredients are the same for the two refions, the south of Thailand variation tastes more spicy because they add more dry chilli during cooking. The Central Thailand version is closer to sweet and sour soup and is the one given here. This is medium hot.

Ingredient  For 2 People
50 gsm Sour Curry Paste.
800 ml. Water.
50 gms. Tamarind
8 Shrimp
50 gms. Pak Kra Chate (Or Green Vegetable)
50 Long Beans (Or green beans)
4 Oyster Mushroons
4 Tablespoons Fish Sauce.
2 Tablespoons Sugar.

Preparation
1. Clean the shrimp, ensure you cut the shell and remove the entrails which can spoil the appearance of the dish.
2. Clean the oyster mushrooms, pak kra chate, and long beans and chop into 3 cm pieces, set aside.
3. Mix the tamarind with water, squeeze until the water goes brown and taste sour. For this curry we need the sour tamarind water but not the tamarind, seive the mixture to remove the tamarind and place the sour water into a pan.
4. Add the sour curry paste to the pan and stir over the heat until the water boils.
5. When water start boiling, add the fish sauce and sugar in and taste it. You are aiming for sweet, sour, salty, spicy taste, you can adjust the sugar, salt and curry paste to achieve this.
6. Add the vegetables and shrimp and cook over the heat for 2 minutes.

Gung Che Num Pa : Raw Prawns with Thai Chillies

This dish is intense Thai food! We eat raw shelled shrimp by spooning on a mixture of chillies, garlic, mint and spring onions, a little fish sauce and lemon juice is sprinkled on, and the shrimp is eaten in one go (minus the tail which you bite off). Fish sauce has a strong taste, so does chilli, so does lemon juice, so does garlic, so does mint, and so does celery. Imagine all these strong tastes in one mouthful of fish, you can see why I call it intense food. It’s like a Thai version of Sushimi, but we eat it with chillies instead of wasabi.

Ingredients  for 2 People ( Meduim Hot )

• 8 Medium Sized Raw Prawns / Langostines
• 6 Bird Chillies
• 4 Garlic Cloves
• 2 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
• 2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice

Garnishes

• 1 Tablespoon Sliced Celery
• A Few Mint Leaves
• 2 Slices of Lemon
• 2 Garlic Cloves Sliced Thinly.

Preparation

1. Clean and shell the prawns, cut them down the middle and flatten them.
2. Drizzle fish sauce over the prawns and keep in the fridge for 5 minutes to chill them.
3. Chop the chillies and 4 garlic cloves finely, and mix with the lemon juice and celery. You can see this mix in the background of the photograph, it’s the mixture you spoon onto the prawns.
4.  Onto a plate, serve the raw prawn, drizzled in the fish sauce, with the chilli/garlic mixture on one side, and the garnishes: the mint leaves, lemon slices, sliced garlic and chopped celery.
5. To eat, take a prawn in your hand, spoon on the mixture, add some mint, celery, sliced garlic and a squeeze of lemon. Place the whole thing in your mouth and bite off the tail. I told you it was intense!

Serve With
      Bitter Melon