My obsession with Thai began my freshman year of college; one of the cheapest eats are definitely Thai specials at lunch time. Appetizer, entree, and a drink all for ~$10 in Manhattan? Count me in! So of course, when I was finally able to have a kitchenette dorm this year, I immediately shopped Chinatown and scoured the internet for recipes and ingredients to make some of my favorite dishes.
This is my variant of a Green Curry I can actually get behind. That is to say, I don’t die too much when eating it, and add and subtract a few vegetables from the authentic recipe.
Ingredients
- Cooking Oil
- 1 tbsp Green Curry Paste*
- 1 cup Canned Coconut Milk
- 1/2 cup Water
- Chicken, Beef, or Seafood of your choice
- Sliced Canned Bamboo (or whatever way you can find it)
- Palm Sugar (optional)
- Vegetables of your choice; I like green beans and mushrooms. If you want to go authentic, use Thai eggplants, which are usually small, green, and can be described as grape-size when compared to other eggplant variants
- Kaffir Leaves (optional garnish) – this would actually be important if you were making a paste from scratch. But then you’d need lemongrass too and then you’d be on a trip.
Directions
Pour in a dollop of cooking oil in pan. Heat oil, then add curry paste. Let warm in pan before adding in coconut milk and water. Place in the meat of your choice (if you choose to have a meat). Cover pan and let simmer until meat has turned the appropriate color for having been cooked. Add in vegetables and let simmer with cover on some more. After it has boiled, try your curry for spiciness-level. If it’s too spicy, add in some grated palm sugar. Serve hot with rice.
* I use curry paste I buy from small Thai grocers; they’re $3-$5 of dense paste that will last you for years, considering that I use about 1 tbsp per 2 servings. The recipe tastes better with canned coconut milk, but the powdered stuff is cheaper and lighter to carry back, a big concern when you walk your groceries back to campus. The most recent brands I’ve been using:
