Assam Prawns 亚参虾

Last week, my sister posted some sort of a riddle for her friend on Facebook and the answer to that riddle was my father's Chilled Cockles! That made me missed my parents' cooking.  My parents don't cook that much. Most of which, according to them were the results of "just anyhow cook", and that became a difficulty to replica their recipes. Try as I might, I seldom come close to the original. Not even my father's simple Chilled Cockles. :(

One of the dishes my mother did that I loved so much was Assam Sotong (squid). She used small baby sotong, which is hard to come by now, and it was with lots of onion and sauce (to go with the rice). Yum!

I'm adapting my mother's recipe for Assam Sotong to make Assam Prawn instead. Not exactly the same as mother's Assam Sotong but I'm sure she will be glad it was her Assam Sotong that gave results to this dish.

Ingredient:

• 400g Prawns, shelled and deveined
• 3 tablespoon Assam (Tamarind) Pulp
• 5 tablespoon Water
• 1 Fresh Red Chili, seeds removed and chopped finely
• 1 teaspoon Light Soy Sauce
• 2 teaspoon Brown Sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon Fish Sauce
• 1 teaspoon Corn Flour
• a dash of Pepper
• a pinch of Salt 
• 4 tablespoon Oil

How to do it:

1. Mix assam pulp with water. Squeeze the pulp to extract the juice.
2. Sieve the assam mixture for the juice only, discard the pulp.
3. Mix the prawns with the assam juice and the rest of the ingredients except oil.
4. Marinate for no longer than 15 minutes otherwise the prawns will turn marshy.
5. Heat oil in wok and in the prawns.
6. Pan fry till all prawns cooked. 
7. Dish and serve.

Note:
Leave the shells and heads on if you like. It will help absorb more sauce. We are lazy and didn't want to get our fingers dirty peeling the shells. :P