Thai Curry

Hey y'all. My favorite food in the world to eat is Thai. If it's pad kee mow extra spicy or panang curry tofu or a lemongrass soup: I love it all. Unfortunately, I have almost no experience cooking Thai food. I have decided to remedy this and I plan to learn how to make some Thai. I can have it anytime I want and I'll learn to make it a little more healthy than restaurants. I made this last night and it came out quite nicely.

Thai Chicken Red Curry
ingredients:
2 large chicken breasts
1 14 oz. can coconut milk
1 white onion
1 bell pepper (orange, red, or green)
3 cloves garlic
1.5" piece of ginger
Zest of 1 lime
juice of 1/2 lime
2 tsp soy sauce or fish sauce
1 TBL Vegetable oil
1 tsp tumeric
2-3 TBL red curry paste
1 tsp red pepper flakes (none for a mild curry, I used about 4 tsp because I like it spicy)
Cooked basmati rice

Cube the chicken into about 1" pieces. Season with salt and pepper. Heat a skillet until it's really hot and add oil. We want the skillet to be hot enough to brown the outside of the chicken without cooking it all of the way through. The chicken will finish cooking in the sauce right before serving. Brown the chicken pieces in the oil and remove from pan and reserve on a plate. Reduce heat in the pan to medium

Thinly slice the onions into uniform slices. Put the onions into the pan over medium heat with a little oil if necessary, salt, pepper and tumeric. Tumeric is the spice that makes ballpark mustard really yellow and it's a necessity in curries. It just so happens to also taste amazing with sauteed onions. You can put these onions on burgers, in omelets, in tacos, etc. Cook the onions for about 10 minutes until they start to break down. Add bell pepper and crushed red pepper. Cook for 5-7 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, lime zest, lime juice, and soy sauce or fish sauce. Cook for 1 minute. (Lately I've been preparing my garlic, ginger, and zest all with a microplane. This tool is a godsend if you do a lot of cooking.)

Add the coconut milk and curry paste to the aromatics. You can add more or less curry paste depending on several factors. (1) the strength of your curry paste (2) how spicy you like it (3) how much you want it to taste like curry. Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes then taste and add more curry paste or red pepper flakes depending on how you want it to taste. Overall, the sauce should simmer for about 20 minutes then add the chicken and simmer for about 5 more minutes. The coconut milk does thicken as it cooks so keep that in mind.

Serve over basmati rice.

This dish came out as good as a lot of curries I've had in Thai restaurants. If you are trying to limit your starchy carbs, you can replace the rice with pureed cauliflower (add a little milk and tumeric to steamed cauliflower then puree in a food processor or with an immersion blender).

I'll definitely have to blog next time I have a successful adventure in Thai cooking.

xo,
Levi