Asian influence - Prawns with coconut rice and sago dessert

This is a quickly-prepared meal for when you don't much feel like cooking or sweating over a hot stove (er, when do I ever not feel like that? - rhetorical question).  It's prawns with coconut rice.

The prawns are bought from the supermarket or fish shop already peeled and cooked - large prawns are better in this dish.  The rice is cooked in coconut milk which imparts a wonderful flavour and moistness to the grains of basmati.  To cheat even further, I used a packet of pre-cooked basmati rice (the ones that you microwave, except I didn't microwave it).  The cooking time is reduced because of the pre-cooking, but the coconut milk still gets absorbed readily.

Prawns with Coconut Rice
serves 2

Ingredients
200ml light coconut milk
150ml water
200g basmati rice
1/2 tsp salt
1 lime, juiced
1 tblsp fish sauce
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp brown sugar
200g large cooked, peeled prawns
1 stalk celery, finely sliced
1 red chilli, finely sliced

Method
1.  Bring coconut milk and water to a simmer in a large saucepan.  Add rice and salt.  Cover and cook until the liquid is absorbed, about 15-20 mins.
2.  Make a sauce by mixing the lime juice, fish sauce, ginger and brown sugar.
3.  Spoon the rice into bowls, top with the prawns, celery and chilli and pour over the sauce.

The basmati rice can be the pre-cooked variety.  The sauce is a fragrant mixture that includes fish sauce and lime juice.

Pour over the sauce before serving.

Add a couple of lime wedges to squeeze over.

For dessert, I mixed the leftover coconut milk with a jar of sago dessert that I picked up from the Malayisa Festival a few months ago.  You just mix a 1/4 cup of coconut milk with the sago and chill in the refrigerator.  The sago dessert is extremely sweet - full of caramelised palm sugar - so the coconut milk is essential.

This dessert is a refreshing complement to the prawn and coconut rice.  It would also be good after a spicier meal, such as rendang or curry.

Reminder: Don't forget to enter the buysterlighting giveaway. There's an $80 voucher up for grabs!