Daab Chingri

Debjani Chatterjee Alam’s Daab Chingri cooks prawns and a spiced sauce inside tender coconuts, keeping their soft flesh in place. This Bengali side dish selects her oven method, with coconut milk, mustard paste and a wheat-dough seal around each coconut lid.

The young coconuts are washed, their tops cut off and saved, and their water poured out and set aside. Prawns are deveined and rinsed, then marinated with turmeric and salt before being lightly fried and lifted from the oil.

Ghee is added to the same remaining oil, followed by bay leaf, dried red chilli, cinnamon and green cardamom. Onion paste cooks first, then tomato, mustard, ginger and garlic pastes cook until oil separates; coconut milk, ground spices, salt and sugar complete the sauce.

The sauce is brought to a boil and reduced before the fried prawns return. Wheat flour is made into dough, and the prawns and sauce are divided between the coconuts; each gets a cut green chilli, its saved lid and a dough seal.

The filled coconuts cook in the oven and remain there until the oven has cooled. The seal is cut open and the prawns are scooped out with the tender coconut flesh; the author serves them with hot rice.