One of the cuisines that I love eating is Thai food. I love their tom yum goong soup, I love eating pad Thai, and also their native delicacies. But the recipe I am going to share this time is a version of their green curry.
The Thais love their curries. They have green and red curry. And one time, while I was vacationing there, some locals took me to a market to try their curry since I told them I cook a version of their green curry. My goodness, I could not eat their dish! It was way too spicy for me, and they were laughing at me since I could not eat too much. Meanwhile, they were biting off fresh peppers like they were apples!
So anyhow, this version of the Thai curry is a milder version, and I first learned it from a cookbook by the British chef Jamie Oliver. He's one of my favorite chefs to watch on TV, as he makes cooking look so easy and fun. Over the years I no longer measure, I just put in the ingredients by heart and have made it my own.
So have fun and try it too! First, I like making my food from scratch. Most of the time. I just find it therapeutic to be in the kitchen cooking away, my music on full blast, and I could be singing like a madwoman while cooking. Ha ha.
For this dish, you will need:
For the green curry paste:
a handful of fresh coriander (yimsay) not kinchay
a handful of spring onions
3 stalks of lemon grass
3 small pcs of green peppers (siling haba)
5-6 red peppers (siling labuyo)
a thumb size piece of ginger
5-6 pieces of lime leaves, torn
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled
a tsp of ground coriander powder
the juice of about 4 limes
salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
For the dish:
5-6 thigh pieces of thigh, or, if you prefer chicken breast, you can also do that
You may even want to use a whole chicken, but since there are some parts of a chicken I don't usually eat, I prefer buying choice cuts, hence, the thigh parts
pure coconut milk of 2 medium sized coconuts
some green leafy vegetable like pechay or 2 pieces of eggplant/ sliced
Here is when I say I have made it my own. Here in the Philippines lime is not a very common ingredient. So when I can't find limes, I use calamansi instead, sometimes lemon juice, but the aroma of lime juice is of course different. I had these limes at the time I prepared this because I got them from Hanoi, Vietnam.
The lime leaves I stock in the freezer. I wrap them in kitchen towels and put them in a ziploc bag. That way they last for a long time. Here in the Philippines the only place where I can find lime leaves is at the Salcedo weekend market in Makati. Otherwise, I hoard them when I get a chance to travel to countries where they abound like Vietnam and Thailand.
As for the ginger, Jamie used galangal, the Thai ginger, but since we don't have it here in the Philippines, I just use the regular ginger.
I forgot to take a picture of the finished product in a serving plate, so forgive me for sharing it in the pan itself. It should have looked better on a plate, I know. In this instance I used pechay for the veggies.
Here are the ingredients for the curry paste. As a tip, to get more juice out of the limes, you can roll it around forcefully on your chopping board to loosen it. The lemon grass stalk I bash with the back of the knife and cut it into small pieces.
What I do is add the lime juice and the olive oil first. Again, if you do not have olive oil at home, you can just use the regular cooking oil you have. No big deal. It has to be on the bottom so that the blending of the ingredients is easier. The brown thing you see on top is the ground coriander seeds.
After that, it doesn't matter what order you put them in. Just make sure the greens are washed and the excess water shaken off before cutting them shorter for blending faster. Cut the ginger and lemon grass stalks into smaller pieces. As for the lime leaves, you just tear it up and throw away the middle 'rib' of the leaf. Add a bit of salt and pepper on top and you start blitzing them a few seconds at a time to avoid your blender from overheating. You can add a little more oil to blend it easier. Just be patient, it will be done.
After a few minutes, your green curry paste should look like this. This batch I made is good for 3 times, so I just put the rest in small containers and I put them in the freezer for next use. The fresh smell of all the spices blended together should now be filling your kitchen.
Wash and clean your chicken pieces thoroughly and once drained of the excess water, mix in around a tablespoon of the paste to marinade it. Leave it aside for around 20 minutes. You can actually prepare it ahead of time and just leave it in the fridge.
When you're ready to cook, put a little oil in a frying pan and brown your chicken pieces. I do this in medium fire, flipping the pieces until they are evenly browned like in the picture. When you're done, transfer the oil left in your pan, or if it is big enough to cook the whole dish, just take the chicken pieces out, and add the remaining curry paste into the pan. As the paste sizzles, the aroma will hit your nose like the smell of freshness exemplified.
After 2-3 minutes, add the coconut milk, add your chicken pieces in, bring to a boil, and after it boils, lower the heat and let it simmer for around 20 minutes. Season with salt and at the last few minutes, add in your veggies. I prefer to put a lot since I love eating veggies. Sometimes I put both in, and you can actually put in any veggie you want to put instead of the ones I use.
After about 20 minutes, your curry should be milky, with enough sauce to mix with rice. You are ready to serve. Happy cooking!
PS: If you want to make a vegetarian version, you can do so with tofu, and some vegetables. What I did in the picture below is pan fried the tofu cut in rectangular pieces, and just added eggplants and some leafy greens! Yum!
For more recipes, go to this page.
Comments
Post a Comment