Easy Shrimp in Curry Cream Sauce

This is me attempting to make a New Year's Resolution and stick to it. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. 

Ok so. Around the holidays I was talking to my sister, who is in marketing and graphic design, about this site and what I wanted to happen with it (nothing? everything?), and we talked about how funny it is that some of the most popular posts are these ancient non-recipes with horrible pictures. We talked about re-doing some for the sake of new pictures and updated measurements, and this is the first one! 

Shrimp with Curry Cream Sauce, originally photographed in my parent's kitchen in 2012 under fluorescent lights. Ouch. Let the record state that my parents have a lovely kitchen. 

The pictures are bad and the writing is awful (not much has changed there), but shrimp curry remains one of my absolute favorite things in the world. It's no secret that we are highly obsessed with all kinds of curry, and a yellow curry with coconut milk appears a few times per month on our dinner rotation. The original recipe had a bunch of chopping with garlic, ginger, jalapeno, and green onion. I LOVE starting curries with that flavor combination, but wanted to do a quick version using dried and jarred flavors to save time and effort. 

The result is a 15-20 minute curry that tastes like tons of effort without any actual effort. Shrimp cooks in 3 minutes or less and there is a teeny bit of cream at the end in honor of the original recipe. 

You need! Curry powder, chili garlic paste, coconut milk, heavy cream, fish sauce, tomato paste, and shrimp. Lime wedges and cilantro for garnish, maybe some salt if you don't want to use too much fish sauce. PS if you've never bought it, fish sauce is an ingredient that will do so well to give your Asian dishes more Asian-ness, official culinary term. It's not scary at all, but is definitely a funky ingredient that adds a ton of flavor to food. 

Gathering the ingredients is all of the prep, seriously. To start, heat a skillet over medium heat with the olive oil, tomato paste, curry powder, and chili garlic paste. Stir this together until it's fragrant, just for about two minutes. Then, pour the coconut milk and fish sauce into the skillet and stir to dissolve the flavorings into the coconut milk. 

At this point, all that is left is to simmer the curry sauce for 5 -10 minutes until it's reduced by half, stirring as you go. Then, add the shrimp and cook them for 90 seconds. 

Taste the curry and add more salt or fish sauce if it needs it until the curry is very flavorful. Turn the heat off the skillet and stir in the cream. This will give the shrimp 2-3 minutes to cook, which will be plenty. 

Done! 

I intentionally left these pictures super simple because I want to stress the point that ANYTHING can be done with this shrimp. it can be eaten alone, over rice or noodles, or even spooned over crostini as an appetizer. For a low carb option, you could shred some cabbage super thinly and serve it raw with the curry spooned on top. 

I adore this. It is so simple (and the curry sauce could definitely be used with lots of different proteins) and quick, versatile and delicious. 

Lime wedges and cilantro aren't mandatory but they definitely should be. 

Here's your new favorite less-than-30-minute meal. Enjoy!

 

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