Passport & Plate - Thai Red Curry with Seafood
Thailand | Thursday, February 5, 2015 | 2 photos
Ingredients
2 14 oz cans of coconut milk, plus one additional in reserve
3/8 cup red curry paste (for a ~6/10 on the heat scale). We recommend Mae Ploy brand as the generic brands found in supermarkets are not as flavorful- please purchase use curry paste!
1-2 pounds of seafood (white fish, crab meat, or shrimp are all good choices)
3-4 tbsp palm sugar (If yours comes in disk shape we typically put in two- have extra ready if you like sweeter curries).
4 tbsp fish sauce
1 red pepper, sliced
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped (optional for more heat)
2-4 cups chopped veggies (broccoli, eggplant, carrots, green beans, snow peas, etc). You can't go wrong with having more veggies.
6-12 dried or frozen kaffir lime leaves
It is worth having an extra can of coconut milk and palm sugar if you would like to adjust the flavors some to your own preference as the key to a perfect curry is a balance of sweet / salty / spicy.
How to prepare this recipeAdd a few tablespoons of cooking oil into a wok and heat on medium-to-high.
When hot, stir in curry paste for a few seconds until fragrant (5-10 seconds max).
Quickly add coconut milk to avoid burning the curry paste. Stir until paste is uniformly dissolved.
Bring coconut milk to a boil, add in vegetables, palm sugar, fish sauce, and stir periodically until cooked and the palm sugar is fully melted.
Add in seafood.
Taste and add any additional palm sugar, fish sauce, curry paste, or coconut milk as needed to balance heat, sweetness, or saltiness.
Add kaffir lime leaves and let boil for a few additional minutes for flavors to extract; stir periodically.
Serve on rice and remove kaffir lime leaves prior to eating.
Note: Palm sugar is difficult to work with as it is incredibly hard. It typically comes as a block or in pre-made disks. If you use the disks we typically add two (about 1-1 1/2" diameter each) mostly because they are stuck together in the package that way. If you have a block, you may have to microwave the palm sugar to make it easier to use. Note that it goes from hard to molten very quickly once heated so be sure to keep an eye on it as cleaning it up from a bowl is not so fun.
The story behind this recipeThis recipe came from our time in Thailand in 2010 where we got engaged. During that trip we took several cooking classes and learned how to make our favorite recipe, Thai curry, to bring home with us. The unfortunate downside to cooking classes abroad is sometimes the recipes do not work out as well at home as they do there due to ingredient variations, so we had to spend several iterations working on our Thai curry recipe until we perfected it using ingredients we can find at home. This recipe is very addictive and we make it about once a month to remind us of our Thailand trip, and it is also on the back of our business cards for our food blog!
