Passport & Plate - The Taste of Thailand: Fragrant Thai Green Curry

melanie_jane_vanzyl — Thu, 5 Mar 2015 02:54:34 GMT

Ingredients
INGREDIENTS
1 cup of jasmine rice
1 cup of water
2 cardamom seeds
1 star anise seed
Cooking oil
1 onion, diced
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
2 cloves of garlic, squashed and diced
1 green chilli, thinly sliced
4 chicken breasts, thinly sliced
2 large eggplants (preferably Thai, but these can be hard to come by)
1 small red pepper, thinly sliced
4 baby marrows, thinly sliced julienne style
1 tin coconut cream
Roughly one cup of chicken stock
a packet of prepared curry paste
Fresh lemongrass to stew
Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare this recipe
STEP ONE
Rinse the jasmine rice thoroughly until the water runs clear and then put on the boil. Pop the cardamom and star anise seeds on the top to flavour the rice. Keep an eye on the rice and add water if necessary until the rice is cooked and no longer crunchy.

STEP TWO
Fry up the diced onion, garlic, ginger and green curry paste in a small amount of oil on low heat for about 15 minutes. You want the flavours to infuse, so the slower the better.

STEP THREE
Pump up the heat and put the chicken breasts, baby marrow, red pepper and eggplant into the pan. You want to fry these up and brown the strips for a bit of colour.

STEP FOUR
Once golden, open the coconut cream and pour over the curry. Pop in a bruised piece of lemon grass, bring to the boil and then turn down low to simmer. Add the chicken stock to create your preferred consistency and get to a sauciness that makes you salivate.

STEP FIVE
Season with salt and pepper to taste. Scoop up a serving of jasmine rice, spoon over a generous splash of curry and dig in.

The story behind this recipe
Dear Thailand

You are vibrant.

Flamboyant, electrifying, striking, beguiling and downright sensuous.

From the fragrant food to the pungent streets, from the sweet fruit shakes to brightly coloured temples and iridescent seas, there’s nothing dull about travelling your stretch. Your children eat spicy food and that's what I loved most about you. I lapped up prawn-laden tomato-coloured Tom Yum soup and relished the unidentifiable meat on sticks sold in the streets - still my most-missed delights.

The one dish I'd order again and again in its many variations was the green curry. A dish I could bank on, with a side of egg-fried rice or the plain sticky white version it created a cheerful parade and drummed along my tongue. It has a very particular smell though and just not easily replicated back home in South Africa. I've tried and tried many times, but after hours of Googling and grocery-store searches for ingredients from your bounty I had to hold my heart. My stove and ambition is not enough to cure that aroma.

Maybe because it's mixed up with grimy Bangkok street curbs and charcoal barbecues laden with sticky pork. Maybe it's because my heart feels differently when I'm on the road, travelling through an unknown country with heightened senses and an overwhelming arrangement of people, places and tastes to satisfy the curiosity you enkindled. Maybe it's because I just don't want to, because the memory of it all is far more bewitching. In the year since my trip to your shores, only once did a pair of chopsticks and a spot on aroma take me pounding down memory lane and my heart went weak with joy. I'm not sure why it was perfect because it hasn't happened again despite my (numerous) attempts and adjustments to the recipe.

I never thought I'd travel for the sake of aroma, but my heart hankers for that perfumed plate and I won't be able to stifle it forever.

Until your spices dance their bouquet and we meet again.

Always yours,
Melanie

My Scholarship entry - A local encounter that changed my life

melanie_jane_vanzyl — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:38:21 GMT

Scents of the 1900’s, tinged with marvel, mingle with the faint trace of urine in one of the 245 stations littered across Paris before a dark pit of stairs explodes in a flurry of foreheads, coats and boots. Parisian society and ardent tourists alike deeply rely on the old network of tunnels, tracks and the trains travelling upon them.

Stride and haste embraced, the Metro became the novelty of my journey. I was licensed with brief belonging until, engrossed in a worthy novel, electrifying music playing at an unhealthy degree, a message crackled over my carriage. A faint grasp of the local tongue ensured I took no notice of such disruption. The train stopped, in a dark and uncomfortably moist tunnel, leaving only the lonely pages of my book, the hush of a bare carriage and the outline of a dim figure.

“Bonjour?” he asked. A tight grin masked my fear. “Parlay voo Anglais?”, I replied with awful articulation. “Oui. Yes! Yoo deed not ghear the alarm? Yoo must not be ghere. That was thee last stop”, claimed the driver in a generous burr. Blatantly aware of my faux pas, I was instead severely concerned about my safety since stranded in a dark tunnel. Alone. With half a deck of French to play with.

“Pardon”, I shrugged. He sighed in a manner only the French can achieve. “Come with me sil vous plait”. I hesitated, accepted my fate of sure demise, and set off because I had little choice. “Merci”, I stuttered and trotted towards the train’s head. I stepped into the driver’s cabin, right where the train begins its clicketty, clacketty dance, and tried to learn the moves. Before I could bellow a request to take the wheel, it ended.

Leaving exact instructions and repeating himself many times, I found the right train. I honestly can’t blame the poor man. I later found out it is exceedingly illegal to have anyone but the driver seated in the chief cabin. Immense gratitude – complimented and contradicted by a robust yearning for more – sits inside my ever ravenous eyes.

Finding Fervour

Passport & Plate - The Taste of Thailand: Fragrant Thai Green Curry

My Scholarship entry - A local encounter that changed my life