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Recipe for

Thai Green Curry

PictureIngredientsStepsTips

Ingredients

For the paste – this is the idea list, substitutions below

  • 4 green birds eye chillies
  • Half a small packet of coriander
  • 2 shallots
  • Half a bulb of garlic
  • 1tbsp of galangal
  • 2 lemongrass stalks
  • Handful of Thai basil leaves
  • Handful of Kafir lime leaves
  • 1tsp fermented shrimp paste
  • 2tsp coriander seeds
  • 1tsp cumin seeds

For the curry

  • 1 tin of coconut milk
  • 200g protein of choice
  • 1tbsp of fish sauce
  • 1tbsp of palm sugar (max)
  • Green or red pepper
  • One other veg max (see notes)

Steps

Curry paste

  1. It is probably easier to grind your seeds separately, so do that
  2. Chop the tip and the arse of your lemongrass stalks off, if the outside is husky peel it off
  3. Peel, destalk and roughly chop everything that is choppable
  4. Blend it all together, if you fancy yourself a Thai chef then do it in a pestle and mortar, otherwise blend it all up good and nice
  5. If it struggles then add water a tbsp at a time until it's easily blendable (the water will cook away anyway)
  6. This should be enough for 2 or 3 curries (of two portions each), portion it out and freeze the rest

Curry proper

  1. Heat a lil bit of oil in a pan, when hot add your paste and stir
  2. Cook for a few minutes. You don't want it to brown, you want it to sort of separate a little and smell delicious
  3. Add a few tbsp of your coconut milk or stock if it gets too dry
  4. Add half of your coconut milk and your protein and cook until the protein is like... half done?
  5. Add your veg and the rest of the coconut milk
  6. A few mins before it feels done taste the sauce, if it can handle it then add your fish sauce
  7. Add palm sugar a little at a time, the curry should have a little sweetness but not be sweet. If that makes sense
  8. Serve with rice

Tips

Things to substitute

  • If you can't get fresh galangal, look for jarred paste, make sure the ingredients are weird as fuck
  • Birdseye chillies are a must, but if sounds too hot, sub half of them for a regular softlad green chilli
  • DO NOT SKIP LEMONGRASS DAY
  • If you can't find Thai Basil, then leave it out. The curry will be fine. Just not amazing. Don't even try and think about using regular basil.
  • Sub shrimp paste for fish sauce, it needs some kind of fermented fish weird in it.
  • Don't have seeds? A general rule of thumb is multiply the amount of seeds by 1.5 to get the amount of powdered spice. eg: 1tsp of cumin seeds = 1.5tsp of cumin powder. Thats not really good maths but fuck it, as long as the ratio of spices is right I don't care.
  • You should really try and use palm sugar, you will realise when you taste it, but if you can't or don't want to, then use half the quantity of brown sugar. If you don't have either, squeeze a lime in – double down on the zest innit

A word about coconut milk

Supermarket coconut milks are rubbish. They're usually filled with stabilisers and thickeners but here are some tips to have a better time.

  • Check the ingredients, you can occasionally find some that is just coconut and water – which is essentially all coconut milk is
  • If in doubt, get the highest percentage of coconut.
  • Check your asian supermarkets, they might have Arroy-D in cartons, that's the gold standard.
  • Coconut milk isn't that hard to make. Want to make your own?

Make your own coconut milk

There are two ways to this. Fresh coconuts or dried coconuts.

Fresh?

  • Smash yer nuts open and scoop out the flesh, don't worry too much about the brown skin but be aware it will add a slight colour to your milk
  • Stick all of the flesh into blender with about 1/3 - 1/2 of it's mass in water
  • Blend until you physically can't bear it being blended any more, then blend again for a few seconds because you are a slave to the curry
  • Drape some muslin (fancy cunt) or a clean tea towel that doesn't smell like washing (this is important for obvious reasons) over a bowl like you're some kind of kitchen CSI person
  • Pour the blended mush onto the cloth and use it to drain all the liquid, tie it to your kitchen counter or tap and let it drain into the bowl if you want
  • That liquid? Coconut, freaking, milk lads
  • You can technically blend the now drained coconut stuff with more water for less creamy second milk
  • You can dry the coconut too, when blended it makes coconut flour. No idea what you do with it then though

Dried or desiccated?

  • Soak the coconut in some water then follow the steps above

A project of love and passion Made by Sheppard.