This recipe may have taken a while to get right but it was really worthwhile the patience. This is everything I wanted a Penang to be.

Ingredients
2 tbsp vegetable oil  
4 x 150g cod fillets 
12 king prawns 
1 garlic clove, finely chopped 
6 tbsp Penang paste 
1 tsp turmeric 
400ml coconut cream 
1½ tbsp palm Sugar  
2 tbsp fish Sauce 
1 makrut lime, juiced 

2 makrut lime leaves
1 tbsp Thai basil, finely sliced 

Ingredients for paste 
60g peanuts 
6 dried long red chillies  
35g shallots, roughly chopped 
10g garlic, roughly chopped 

1 tbsp lemongrass 
½ tsp salt 
1½ tbsp galangal paste 
1 tsp cumin   
1 tsp coriander   
zest of 1 makrut lime  
1 tsp shrimp paste  

Method
Start by dry frying the dried chillies for a few minutes until fragrant.  Once toasted, put the chillies into a bowl and cover with boiling water.  Soak for 20-30 minutes. 

Put the peanuts into a dry frying pan and cook until golden. Around 10 minutes.

Put the shallots, garlic, lemongrass and the chillies into a food processor (don’t yet add the water but keep it), and pulse until chopped.  Add the peanuts and pulse again until also chopped.  Add the rest of the paste ingredients along with 2½ tbsp of the chilli water.  Blitz until smooth.  Depending on my shallots, I do sometimes find it needs a little extra water to become a paste. Just add enough water to form a paste, it may be you end up adding 4 tbsps, that is fine.

You can pound the ingredients in a mortar and pestle if you prefer and if you do, don't add the water yet. Once you have pounded the ingredients, you can then add the water to make it more paste like.

To make the curry heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a wok and fry off the prawns until they start to go golden, this should take only a few minutes. Add the garlic for a minute and then add the curry paste and turmeric and fry for a few minutes until fragrant.  

Add the coconut cream and stir through until thoroughly mixed through  Add the sugar, the fish sauce and the lime juice and stir through, remove the prawns and put to one side. Cook the sauce over a medium heat for 10 mins.  Check the sauce, it should be balanced and not taste too salty or acidic or sweet, if any one flavour is too prominent then adjust with fish sauce, lime juice or sugar to balance.  Add the basil, stir through and serve. 

Meanwhile, while the sauce is cooking, heat 2 tbsps of oil in a large frying pan and cook the cod for 7-10 minutes until flakey and cooked through.

Put the prawns back into the curry sauce for a couple of minutes until thoroughly cooked through, usually around 2-3 minutes.