Recipes

My husband and I are big fans of Thai food. What I like about south-eastern Asian food the most is the strong taste of fresh ingredients like ginger, fish and vegetables that are not overcooked and have lots of beautiful colours as well.

There are some very tasty foods in Thai cuisine, but the only dishes I have tried to cook is with green curry. I have cooked it several times and every time I use a different recipe and surprisingly, all of those recipes were satisfying to our really finicky taste. It is really easy to cook and cooking time would be less than an hour and you have the ability to change the recipe with your favourite vegetables and meats without any major difference in taste.

Green curry dishes have four major ingredients including green curry paste, coconut milk or cream, meats (fish, shrimp, chicken and beef) and vegetables. 

You can cook your own green curry paste, (I cooked once and it had an extremely satisfying taste) but you can buy green curry paste from most grocery stores and add your favourite vegetables from green curry recipe like extra ginger, garlic or shallot to boost the green curry taste!

 Because you use green curry paste, you should be aware of the amount of salt that they put in the paste so don’t put extra or it will be too salty. Every one tablespoon or one and half tablespoons (depends how much salt it has) needs 400 cc of coconut milk. And, as I mentioned before, you can add your favourite aromatic vegetables.

Pour half of the coconut milk can in a pan. While the water is vaporizing, you see small bubbles around your pan and then you can add your curry paste, garlic, shallots, ginger, lemon grass and lemon leaves  (do not worry about the number of vegetables! You cannot go wrong, so add those extra whatever you want, or you can simply skip this step).

 After 2 or 3 minutes stir frying you can add your favourite meat-(I prefer shrimp but boneless chicken thighs are very popular as well). Obviously, chicken or beef need more time for being cooked but when you want to use fish or shrimp, you can add those just a few minutes before serving.  After stir frying your meats, (just one or two minutes), you can add the other half of your coconut milk. I am never able to resist putting some extra coconut milk, so if you don't worry about some extra calories pour additional coconut milk that makes your dish much tastier! Now I am giving you another tip for having a better color and great taste.  You can grind Thai basil with coconut milk then pour it in the pan. If you would find your green curry is too green which has happened to me, don't panic, just add some extra coconut milk. But your green curry won't be a green curry, if you don't add sugar cane in it. Don't worry, you can add a little sugar instead of sugarcane. In this step, you can add a few drops of fish sauce (again be careful of the amount of salt).

Now decrease the temperature between low to medium and put the pan's lid on and wait for cooking your meats (your meat portions have to be in bite size so no need a lot of time for cooking). In my opinion, Chinese eggplant is a great ingredient for the green curry, but you can add Bok Choy, shredded carrots or simply just skip this step. So, if you wish to add those vegetables, just add them five minutes before serving. And finally, your dish needs more colour so just before serving, put some chopped green onion, red chillies and Thai basil. Enjoy! 

P.S.

As l mentioned before you can simply skip all those ingredients if you don't have them or sometimes you can use your creativity, for example I realized the zest of green lemon has same taste of lemon grass so grate lemon skin and I usually pour some drops of the same lemon to my green curry to have a little ( just a little) sour taste to cherish my Persian taste!