Green curry with chicken or pork

Thai green curry is one of the most famous dishes of Thai cuisine. Some bring a jar or a package of curry paste from Thailand, while I still could not find ready-to-use green curry paste that suits my taste. That’s why I suggest cooking Thai green curry right from the start. The huge advantage is that you can put as much chili pepper as you wish: in Thailand this dish is considered to be quite spicy. Anyway I would recommend leaving at least a pinch of chili.

This recipe of Thai green curry is adapted to the range of goods that can be found in my place (St. Petersburg, Russia). While the recipe itself is very easy, the most difficult thing is to find all the ingredients needed. So if you intend to achieve success in cooking Thai green curry, I would advise you to read at first this recipe and than read the recipe of green curry paste, so you will find out, how to choose and replace ingredients. It is supposed that you use proportions that are listed below, as the amount of paste and meat are balanced here.

Thai green curry has a lot of sauce, that’s why many tourists consider it being a soup. That’s not true. Thai green curry should be served like this: at first you put some boiled rice on a plate (1:1 with green curry) and then you top it with green curry chicken – the sauce will moisten every rice grain and the dish won’t look like a soup. My favorite garnish is boiled Jasmine rice, but any type of rice will go. Also you can serve Thai green curry with noodles (rice noodles, glass noodles etc), but noodles can’t absorb as much sauce as the rice can.

Ingredients for green curry paste:

• 20-50 g of green chili pepper
• 20 g of lemongrass stalks
• 10 g (3-4 cloves) of garlic
• 10 g of onion
• 8 g of fresh cilantro (roots, stalks, leaves)
• 6 g of fresh ginger root (or galangal)
• 6 g of lime zest – it’s amount of zest from lime that weighs ~40 g (don’t use “bald” lime for mojito – it will be needed for marinade)
• 1 tbsp of fish sauce (or 1 tsp of shrimp paste)
• 15 g (2,5 tsp) of salt
• 0,5 tsp of cumin (whole seeds)
• 1 tsp of coriander (whole seeds)
• 0,5 tsp of ground white pepper
• 0,5-0,75 tsp of sugar (optional)

Main ingredients:

• 0,5 kg of chicken fillet or pork (I prefer chicken as it becomes more tender)
• 400 ml of coconut milk
• 300 g of eggplants (you may use frozen eggplants cut in small pieces, if they are too expensive you can replace them with 200-300 g of frozen broccoli, also you can add 100 g of frozen green sweet peas)
• 2 tbsp of dry basil leaves or 4 twigs of fresh basil
• If you have some cilantro left, you can add 3-5 g of its leaves
• 3 leaves of kaffir lime (possible to use dry leaves or just omit them)
• 1-2 tbsp of flavorless oil

Ingredients for marinating the meat:

• One more clove of garlic
• Juice from that “bald” lime  (if you have already made mojito from it, you can replace it with a piece of lemon of the same size, ~40-50 g)

It’s easier to cook Thai green curry in a deep non-stick pan (capacity should be 1,6 l and up). Making green curry paste requires coffee grinder and hand blender.

Instructions

1. Make green curry paste and start boiling the rice for a garnish.

2. Slice chicken fillet (the maximum size of slices should not exceed 5х5 cm). Put it to a bowl, add minced garlic clove and juice out of zestless lime. Mix well and leave it to marinate for at least 15-30 min.

3. Dice eggplants. If you use already cut deep-frozen vegetables, have them near the pan. You may cut broccoli flowers in order to make them smaller.

If you use big fresh dark-skinned eggplants, you’d rather rub them with some salt, leave for 15-20 min, and wash them – in order to get rid of bitter taste. But in this case you’ll need to reduce the amount of salt in recipe by at least 0,5 tsp. Anyway deep frozen dark-skinned eggplants are sold being already cut, I’ve cooked with them, they didn’t give too much of bitter taste, so they are ok.

Mince herbs (accept the leaves of kaffir lime – they are put away while serving, like we usually do it with bay leaves).

4. Open the package of coconut milk in advance. Pour oil onto a pan and switch on the maximum heat. Put chicken slices and start frying constantly stirring. After 1 min. add green curry paste and 4 tbsp of coconut milk (it’s upper part has usually butter texture). Continue frying, constantly stirring for 2-4 min. The meat should change its colour.

5. Add the rest of coconut milk, vegetables and herbs. Constantly stirring bring to a boil, Reduce the heat and simmer occasionally stirring until vegetables are cooked (broccoli & pea takes less than 5 min, while eggplants require 5-7 min).

6. Serve Thai green curry by topping boiled rice with meat and vegetables (don’t forget to pour fragrant sauce all over the rice). Proportion of rice and green curry should be 50/50, or you may put more rice.