Ginataang hipon

Prawns cooked in their shells in coconut milk, added at the very end of a sauce made first.

Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 700 g large prawns, shell on
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 300 g squash, in 3 cm chunks
• 200 g green beans
• 40 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 6 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 6 siling labuyo
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. SHELLS ON, AND IN LAST. Prawns take three minutes and everything else takes twenty, so the sauce is finished before they go anywhere near it. The shells are what give the coconut milk any prawn flavour at all -- peeled, you get coconut milk with something pink in it.
2. Snip down the back of each shell with scissors and lift the vein out, leaving the shell on. Now the sauce can get at the flesh and the shell still does its work.
3. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 4 minutes.
4. Squash in, turned over, 2 minutes. Coconut milk and fish sauce in.
5. Simmer uncovered 15 minutes, until the squash is soft at the edges and starting to thicken the sauce. Mash two or three chunks against the side of the pan -- that is the only thickening this needs.
6. Beans in, 4 minutes.
7. Heat up to a brisk simmer, prawns in, and 3 minutes with the lid on. They are done the moment the shells have gone completely orange and the flesh has pulled away from them.
8. Chillies and pepper in, heat off, and serve at once. Kept warm, the prawns keep cooking in the pan and tighten.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes