Rica Rica Prawns

(The Nutmeg Trail p.145)

One of the chilli hotspots of the world is Northern Sulawesi. Here fragrant lime leaves, lemon basil and extreme use of chilli typify the food for heat that hits you with shouts, not whispers. Spice pastes are often used in one-to-one ratio with the quantity of meat or seafood. Rica rica is the signature cooking style, the ‘c’ pronounced 'ch' as in chilli, which is also what the word means. Stoke the fire to your taste, by all means scaling up the bird’s eyes. These are for heat, the seeded larger chillies are there for flavour. 

Serves 4

  • 2 tablespoons neutral oil

  • 3 medium tomatoes, chopped

  • 100g spring onions, trimmed and chopped 

  • 4 lime leaves 

  • ½ teaspoon sugar

  • 360g peeled raw prawns

  • Squeeze of lime

Spice paste 

  • 5 large red chillies, seeds removed

  • 1-4 bird’s eye chillies, seeds in (optional)

  • 4 small shallots

  • 4 garlic cloves

  • thumb of ginger, peeled 

  • 1⁄2 teaspoon fine salt 

  • Juice of a lime 

Roughly chop the aromatics for the spice paste and blitz all the ingredients together in a blender to a rough paste.

 Heat the oil in a frying pan or wok and scrape in the spice paste. Fry on a medium heat, stirring often, until it is sweetly fragrant and the harsh, raw edge has gone. Stir in the tomatoes, spring onions, lime leaves and sugar and cook so the tomatoes start to break down to a sauce. 

Add the prawns and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the prawns lose their glassiness and are just cooked through and pink. Spritz in some lime juice and taste to see if any of the flavours need balancing – add more lime to brighten, or sugar and salt as needed. Serve at once.

Recipe from The Nutmeg Trail by Eleanor Ford

Photo: Ola Smit