Tasty Thai

If I had to pick one cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, I’d pick Thai. Italian food rates highly on my list, but I’d surely wind up obese with all that pasta, pizza and tiramisu – remind me again why I haven’t been to Italy yet? Thai food has so many layers: sweet, sour, salty and spicy, making it completely irresistible.

When I was in Chiang Mai, taking a Thai cooking course was very high on my list of priorities. I went through my guesthouse’s suggested company: Thai Farm and found them to be incredible. Our host was hilarious, making lots of jokes while still relaying lots of really key information to us. If I could, I’d teleport myself back to Chiang Mai right now just for the delicious food. But seeing as I’m stuck in the Czech Republic (my taste bud’s hell) I figured I might as well share my favourite Thai recipe. It has the Izy seal of approval – it tasted heavenly and not just because I cooked it.

Red Curry Chicken – Kaeng Phed Gai

Ingredients for Curry paste – Serves 1 Izy or 2 Thai people:
2-3 red dried chillies (soak in cold water about 15 mins before using)
1 T of chopped shallots
1 tsp of chopped galangal (Khaa)
½ tsp of chopped kaffir lime rind
1 tsp of chopped garlic 1 T of chopped lemongrass
1 T of chopped krachai (or Thai Ginseng)
¼ tsp of roasted cumin seeds
¼ tsp of roasted coriander seeds
¼ tsp of salt (if you want to preserve the paste make it ½ tsp)

Other ingredients
1 cup of sliced eggplants (or other vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli or potato)
¼ cup of smaller pea-like eggplants (Makheau Phuang)
1/3 cup sliced onion
70 grams sliced chicken*
1 tsp of sugar
1 T of fish sauce or soy sauce
3 kaffir lime leaves
2 stems of sweet basil (Horapaa)
1 cup of coconut milk 1 cup of water
*Chicken can be substituted with beer, pork, fishball or tofu

Preparation of Red Curry sauce
Put the ingredients for the curry paste in the mortar. Pound with the pestle until everything is mixed and ground thoroughly. You can also use a blender if you’re not retro.
Preparation of Red Curry
Pour the coconut milk into the pot and turn on to medium heat. Stir until oil appears. Add red curry paste and chicken and stir until almost done. Add your vegetables, water, sugar, fish sauce, salt and turn the heat up. Stir a little. When everything is cooked, put the sweet basil and lime leaves in. Serve with rice. Pat yourself on the back; you have made one delicious curry. I would suggest making a big batch of red curry paste and keeping it in a sealed jar in the fridge, that way you can whip out some curry really easily.
If you’d prefer a green curry, substitute the 2-3 red dried chilies for 2-3 green long chilies – Tadaaa!