While buying the prawns, the fish seller will remove the head and shell. You need to 'de-vein' the prawns before use i.e. remove the intestines.

Once all the prawns are cleaned, wash them off once and mix with 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp turmeric and let it rest for 15 min.

Dry roast the red chillies, coriander seeds, pepper corns and caraway seeds

Now you need to extract the coconut milk. Heat 1 cup water till it boils. Switch off the heat and add the coconut to it. Let it cool. You can place the vessel containing the coconut into another larger vessel filled with cold water to speed up the cooling.

After the coconut cools, transfer it into a grinder. Add the roasted spices (break up the chillies)

Discard the left over coconut and spice residue

Chop 1 small onion finely. Chop 4 green chillies. Chop 3 cloves garlic finely.

Heat 3 tbsp oil in a Kadhai. Add 1/2 tsp mustard seeds and wait until they pop. Add 1 sprig curry leaves. Add the garlic, green chillies and onion. Fry on low flame for 5 min.

In the meantime wash the prawns a couple of times and discard the water.

Add the prawns to the Kadhai and fry for 2 min.

Add a little water to the prawns to bring the temperature down to boiling point. The coconut milk may split if you add it to a very hot vessel so you need to lower the temperature.

Add the thin coconut water and salt. Keep the flame on medium and stir until the mix just starts to boil. Immediately lower the flame and cook for 7 min. The coconut milk will split if it is boiled too vigorously.

Add the thick coconut milk and kokum. If you don't have kokum, you can use tamarind pulp. Stir and heat it until just before it boils. Switch off the flame.

Serve with rice.