I love prawns and I love curry but I've always felt a bit strange about combining the two. However, having seen the picture on the front of the sachet of Patak's Goan Hot & Sour Stir Fry Sauce that I pulled out of the cupboard, I decided to give it a go and was actually pleasantly surprised with the result. The sauce is based on a traditional dish called Balchao that is usually made with prawns but you could also use meat or fish.
Following the recipe suggestion on the back of the pack, I chopped up half a green pepper and a red onion. (I love the colour combination.)
After frying the vegetables for several minutes until they were slightly soft (while retaining a bit of crunch), I added the cooked peeled prawns.
Time to add the sachet of sauce. Patak's describe it as follows : "Red chillies, cinnamon, cloves , ginger, coriander and tomatoes are matured in vinegar to deliver a delicious hot & sour sauce."
It's labelled as "hot" with a three-chilli rating on the pack and a five-chilli rating on the website, which is a bit confusing. Having had a sneaky taste, I did find it a bit too hot for our tastes. (I used to love really spicy food but toned things down when pregnant and breastfeeding and never got back into loving really fiery food strangely !)
I decided to cool things down with a generous dollop of Rachel's Organic Greek-style Coconut Yogurt.
It may not be part of the original recipe but it worked really well, reducing the heat level while leaving a slight spicy tingle on the tongue. You could really taste the prawns and tomatoes, mingling with the herbs and spices, and the peppers and onions gave some lovely crunch to liven up the texture.
This is one of the review products that got pushed to the back of the cupboard because I was slightly put off by the heat rating, but I'm really glad we tried it. It made a nice change to our usual chicken korma, biryani and rogan josh and I'd definitely use prawns in curry again. Maybe I should try fish curry next - that's another flavour combination I'm not sure about !
One 70g serving of sauce (half of the pouch) contains 68 calories, 5.4g of carbs (of which 2.1g sugars), 4.7g of fat (of which 0.4g saturated) and 0.8g of fibre.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £1.09 for 70g
for more information : http://www.pataks.co.uk/products/stir-fry-new-goan-hot-sour.aspx
Disclosure : I received the product in order to write an honest review.
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Love that coconut yogurt! My husband loves food really hot so could maybe just add the yogurt for the rest of us!
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