Skip to main content

Thai Brown Curry



For the longest time, I debated on whether to share this recipe. After all, this is not your good looking Thai Red Curry or Green Curry. It's in fact, a very boring shade of brown. But then, this is brown for a reason. The red color in the traditional curry comes from a mix of dried red and fresh bird eye chillis. If you are a chilli wimp like me, the brown curry is the one for you. It's got all the flavour of the red curry but much, much less heat. This version's also adapted for my vegetarian tastes, and has no fish sauce or shrimp paste. So go ahead, make this piping hot bowl of comfort for a rainy day lunch.

Ingredients
For spice paste
1 tsp coriander seeds, toasted on a dry pan
1lemongrass stalk, without the woody end - finely chopped
1/2 tsp whole peppercorns
1 inch piece of galangal, peeled and roughly chopped
2 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 kaffir lime leaves
2-3 cilantro stems, roughly chopped (don't use the leaves)
2 bird eye chillis
1 tsp non-spicy chilli powder (called kashmiri lal mirch in India) - can substitute with chipotle
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
For the curry
1 tbsp sesame oil
100 ml coconut milk
1/2 cup vegetables of your choice, chopped into bite sized pieces. I used a mix of zucchini, babycorn, thai brinjal and mushroom



Now the list above looks daunting but once you have prepped everything as mentioned, this is super easy. Pop everything for the spice paste in a grinder and blend to as fine a paste as you can get. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a frying pan and fry the spice paste until completely dry. Add the chopped vegetables and stir for 2-3 minutes until the spice paste coats the veggies well. Add the coconut milk and 1/2 cup water. Mix, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and let cook until the curry is of a consistency you like. I keep it quite soupy but really, make it as thick as you want. At this point, check for seasoning - we haven't added any salt so far because there is usually enough in soy sauce but add more if you need it.

Serve the curry with steamed rice. To add an extra texture, you can top your curry with something crispy. I used fried shallots but crushed peanuts work equally well. A dash of lime is also a very good idea to balance out the flavours.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o

Announcing AWED : Britain

Before I ate my first Italian wood fired pizza, before I went to that swanky Japanese sushi bar for the first time, or the neighborhood Chinese joint, the first non-Indian cuisine I encountered was British. Not real food, mind you, but the tempting, oh so delicious descriptions in my favorite novels. From Enid Blyton to Jane Austen to P.G. Wodehouse, every favorite character in every favorite novel seems to have food on their mind. Yes, British food gets ridiculed a lot. But forget their main course dishes for now, and think of the full English breakfast and the elegant afternoon teas. Then try imagining the world without cucumber sandwiches or potato chips and you will realize you can't do without British food. Which is why when I saw that DK was looking for hosts for her monthly event AWED (A Worldly Epicurean's Delight) and there has never been a British AWED, I promptly signed up. The rules are simple really: Make any vegetarian or vegan British dish (eggs are