Chingri Shutki Bhuna

Shutki or sundried fish are a delicasy from the earstehile opar Bangla, now Bangladesh and we Bangals know how to make them into a finger licking curry. I bought this shutki chingri from a Bangladeshi stall in a local handcraft fair in Kolkata and took it out just a little everytime to almost last a lifetime. It stayed in the deep freezer just fine and gave me a taste of home now and then. 

With hot hot chillies and lots of garlic is the proper way to cook a shutki. You can add potato wedges or you can even add them to a chorchori. But the simple shutki bhuna is always the recipe that I go back to. Because in my opinion prawns, fresh or sundried should always be the star of the dish they are being added to.

Chingri Shutki Bhuna

For 2

I gredients:

100gm shutki chingri 

1 large onion

5 dry red chillies

6 cloves of garlic

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/2 tsp red chilli powder

Salt 

4tbsp mustard oil

1 tsp sugar

Method:

Take a bowl of boiling hot water and submerge the shutki chingri in it.

Let it stay there for 15 monutes and take them out of water.

Keep them in a clean bowl.

Soak the dry red chillies in hot water for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes grind them with a little bit of the soaked water to make a fine paste.

Roughly pound the garlic so that there are big chunks of garlic.

Heat mustard oil in a kadai and add tge sliced onions to them.

Add the sugar to them and fry the onionsm stirring every now and then until they caramelize.

Add the red chilli paste and pounded garlic to them.

Add the turmeric powder, red chilli powder and salt and keep wtirring until you see the oil starting to float on top.

Now add the chingri shutki.

Lower the flame and simmer for 2 minutes.

Drizzle some more muatard oil on top.

Serve hot with simple white rice and nothing more.