Spicy Red Thai Curry Mussels & Prawns

 

First, you will need to wash and de-barnacle-ize (my new word for the day!) your mussels.  I use 1 lb of each of mussels and prawns. 

Wash your prawns, and I would suggest you keep the shells on the prawns.  When cooking with shrimp, I highly recommend that you always leave the shells on. The shells add so much favor.  If you would like to prove this to yourself, I recommend cooking one dish with the shells and one without.  You can run your own test and see if you can taste the difference.  I use to get complaints (of laziness)- why do you have to leave the shells on?  One day , I cooked the same dish with no shells.  My family could tell the difference.  A little shell won't kill ya.  God gave you fingernails!  Use them!  It is worth the hassle.  Definitely, make sure the shrimp is deveined.

Sauce steam mussels:

  

For the steam sauce, add dry white wine or filtered sake, onions, lemongrass, red curry paste, kaffir (lime leaves) and a pinch of sugar- simmer until the wine evaporates.  Basically, you are releasing and concentrating flavor in this brew. You are building a new paste.



Next, add fish broth to the new paste and a steam sauce, then add mussels and turn stove to high heat- cook for 5 to 6 minutes or until you see all the mussels open. 

Remove mussels from the sauce and strain the juice. 

Next, add more white wine, onions, red curry paste to the juice and make your final sauce.  I add some heat the sauce at this point by adding hot chili oil.  I add the prawns, bamboo shoots and straw mushrooms to the sauce and cook until the shrimp turn a beautiful pink color.

Last, I add a can coconut milk to give it that thai spin.

  

When I serve, I add back the mussels and taste the sauce to see if I need to add anymore seasoning like salt or pepper.  Or, you can add fish sauce.  I would taste the fish sauce prior to adding.  It is very salty.  To me, it tastes like soy sauce to the 1 millionth power!  Add very carefully…

In this dish, I used fetticini rice noodles, or you can substitute sticky rice,, basically whatever you like!

When you are serving, I like to add fresh cilantro and lime.  I know this dish looks small in the picture, but this bowl is actually a very large bowl.  It could feed 5 to 6 people, easily.

Enjoy!