Shutki chingri bhorta

Debjani Chatterjee Alam’s Shutki Chingri Bhorta is her Bengali dried-prawn paste, documented as a dish associated with Bangladesh. It combines dried prawns with onion, prepared garlic and ginger pastes, chillies, mustard oil and lemon juice.

The dried prawns are washed under running water, then in a bowl of water, and strained by hand. Onions are roughly chopped. Mustard oil heats in a wok, and half the onion fries until crisp and is kept aside.

Dried red chillies fry in the same oil, then are strained out and kept aside. The washed prawns sauté in the remaining oil until their water evaporates. The remaining onion, ginger paste, garlic paste and green chillies are added and cooked on low heat, with salt adjusted as needed.

After the heat is switched off, the cooked prawns rest. They join the same fried onion and red chillies in a mixer grinder with a little more of the listed mustard oil and lemon juice, and are ground into a smooth paste.

The selected presentation serves the paste as it is with steamed rice, a separate green chilli and a piece of lemon. Crisp-fried onion and red chilli have been ground into the same prawn mixture.