Home made prawn crackers are something I've been wanting to have a go at making for a while now. This particular recipe comes from David Thompson's Thai Food (aka Aharn Thai, depending on which way up the book cover is).
You start by mincing up raw prawns with garlic, seasoning it and mixing it into a dough with tapioca flour. Then it's made into a fishy kind of sausage and steamed until the whole thing is cooked.
The sausage is then sliced into very fine discs, which need to be dried in the sun / a cool oven. At this point you have the familiar looking semi-opaque dried chips you can buy from any Chinese or Asian store. Fry 'em up in hot oil and you end up with these:
Honestly? Not worth the effort if you ask me. The end result was a bit chewy in the middle (probably because they weren't sufficiently dried), bland and disappointing. I guess I knew deep down that something as processed as a prawn cracker is best left to the professionals and their big factories. Still it was an interesting experiment.
The Panaeng Beef Curry I also made from a David Thompson recipe was much more successful. Using simmered beef brisket and a home made curry paste. If there's a blender that makes proper curry paste I haven't found it, so I stick to the old fashioned pestle and mortar technique. Takes a long time and makes your arms ache, but the end result is infinitely superior.
Got to say though that the Thompson recipe uses staggering amounts of coconut cream and milk - the finished sauce must be around 40% fat. In future I'll scale this way back so that I don't die of heart disease before I go back for second helpings.
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