cook: thai green curry

I had the beginnings for a Thai green curry with defrosted chicken and a jar of green curry paste, but I only vaguely remembered how to use these ingredients. 

I turned to an Asian Australian blogger's site called Recipe Tin Eats, who conveniently had this pictorial guide.

Then I remembered! Also remembered the lemongrass paste in my fridge and the kaffir lime leaves and Thai peppers in my freezer as well as the basil plant on my kitchen counter to amp up flavors. Per the blog's recommendation, I added fresh garlic and ginger. I sliced up a zucchini, a 1/3 of a red bell pepper, and snipped the ends of what sugar snap peas I had left. I also found cilantro to add to my curry and plunged all the vegetables into ice cold water to crisp up the vegetables.

I "fried" the green curry paste (note to self: use the whole jar) in a little grapeseed oil. I then added the remnants of a container of vegetable broth as well as what was left in a jar of homemade chicken bone broth.

I tasted the need for more seasoning and added a spoonful of fish sauce. I added lots of kaffir lime leaves and boiled a lot of that broth down to lessen the volume of liquid. After adding the coconut milk, the base was still too soupy for my liking, and so I continued boiling the sauce down.

I also removed the bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs I had added to the boiling sauce. After 20 minutes, the chicken was done, but the skin was unappealingly flabby. And so I put the chicken thighs under a low broiler to brown and get as crisp as possible. In the meantime, I added the vegetables and chopped the cilantro. And after 10 minutes, the curry was done and ready to spoon over chicken and leftover brown and jasmine rice.

 

I should have left the Thai pepper for longer in the sauce because I could have taken more heat.

But when one is even too lazy to go to Charm Thai Eatery just a short drive away, then homemade will do. Also I needed to use up the vegetables in my refrigerator bin. The pandemic has definitely made me conscious to not discard food that can still be eaten. The Thai green curry was my lunch yesterday and Patrick’s dinner last night, and now all that remains are vegetables and sauce for another leftover meal.