Cereal Prawns/Shrimp

This is a popular dish in Malaysia and Singapore as many restaurants will have this dish in their menu. I remember cooking this dish once a year for our family reunion dinner. We just love the crunchy texture of the cereal and egg yolk. Cooking this is easy nowadays as we are able to get ready packed cereal prawns mix but sometime I like cooking it from scratch. One of my blog readers requested the recipe for this dish. So here it goes. I hope this is what you are looking for.

Ingredients:

1 pound of large shrimps/prawns
3 tbsp of cornstarch
4 cloves garlic – finely chopped
2 sprigs of curry leaves
4 bird eye chilies – cut small
3 tbsp butter
½ cup oat/or nestum
2 egg yolks
2 tbsp of milk
1 1/2 tsp of chicken granules
1 tsp sugar
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Use a pair of scissors to cut off all the legs of shrimps. Cut alone the back and remove the black vein. Leave the head and shell intact. Pat dries the shrimps and seasons it with a bit of salt and pepper.
2. Lightly dredged the shrimp with cornstarch. Heat up some oil to deep fried it (I actually pan fried it) Remove them once they turn pink on both side.
3. Remove all the oil in the pan. Wipe clean. Beat the egg yolk and add in the milk. Stir and mix well. If you are using oats, toast it lightly in a 375 degree F oven for 3-4 min.
4. Add in the 3 tbsp of butter to the frying pan. Swirl in the egg yolk and stir constantly. At this stage you will see lots of bubbles appearing in the pan. Add in the garlic, chilies and curry leaves. Continue to stir fry until fragrant.
5. Add in the oatmeal. Continue to stir and toss. Add in the chicken granules, sugar, pepper and salt.
6. Toss in the shrimps; continue to stir fry until the shrimps are well coated with the oatmeal. Dish out and serve.

Note: I actually wanted to use nestum for this dish but only found out that the nestum in my pantry is chocolate flavor so I just used oats. The result is not as good/crispy as I wanted it to be but you can replace the oatmeal with nestum.