Thai green curry

As a big fan of green and Thai, it was only a matter of time before I moved on to green curry. I'm a firm believer in having as much as possible, if not everything fresh and home made. So this curry recipe calls for everything to be made from scratch.

Green curry paste

The soul of a curry is composed of its spices. For a curry like this the curry paste is almost the complete dish condensed into a few spoonfuls. Making it from scratch is well worth the effort as it tastes better and like all home made food you can rest easy knowing what goes in it. This is a version I adapted and tweaked that uses minimal ingredients to produce a mild and flavourful curry.

Ingredients

1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
6 white peppercorns or 1 tsp ground white pepper
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
2 lemongrass stems (pale part only), roughly chopped
1 tbs freshly grated galangal or ginger 
3 long green chili, roughly chopped
4 kaffir lime leaves (fresh) spine removed, roughly chopped or 4 dried kaffir lime leaves
2 eschalots, roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

Method

1. Toast the dried spices until aromatic and grind to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle

2. Transfer the spice mix and remaining into a blender or food processor and blend with 1 tbsp water until a paste consistency as seen above.


Thai Green Curry

With a paste prepared, a complete curry is only a few steps away  

Ingredients

2 tbs sunflower oil or vegetable oil
2 baby eggplants, halved lengthways, cut into 2cm pieces
2-3 tbs green curry paste (see above recipe)
500g skinless chicken thigh fillets, cut into 3cm pieces
2 cups (500ml) coconut cream
2 cups (500ml) chicken stock
125g fresh baby corn, halved lengthways
2 tbs fish sauce (optional for taste)
1 tbs lime juice
1 tbs sugar, to taste (personally I use 3 tbs because I like my curry sweet)
Sliced red chilli and Thai basil, to garnish

Method

1. Heat oil in a wok or deep frypan over high heat. Add eggplant and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes until golden. Set eggplant aside.
 
2. Add paste to wok and stir briefly. Add chicken and stir-fry, tossing to ensure paste doesn't burn, for 2-3 minutes until seared. Add coconut cream, stock and corn and bring to the boil. Return eggplant to pan, then reduce heat to low and simmer for a further 5 minutes until chicken is cooked and corn is just tender. Stir in fish sauce, lime juice and sugar and heat through for 1 minute.
 
3.Garnish with red chilli, extra lime leaves and Thai basil. Serve with steamed rice.

  

   

Holiday cooking

Helloooo it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Sorry! I've just been eating out so much and cooking quite a bit at home and I just couldn't decide on what to write. So heres a big post.

During one of my many home cooking adventures I stumbled across the 'Sous Vide' (soo veed) technique of cooking. This technique is used in quite a few more expensive dishes in higher end restaurants which meticulously cook their food to perfection, and to be able to do this myself at home with no technical ability at all, I find it particularly exciting.

Sous Vide

There are many cooking techniques out there that are well known: Deep/Shallow fry, stiry fry, pan fry, boiling, steaming, etc.. But the thing that sets Sous Vide apart from these is that the technique itself requires knowledge of the specific cooking temperatures of food and to a lesser extent water content and the behavior of the food that is being cooked when it is cooked. (Chemical reactions, physical processes, e.g. contraction / formation of collagen fibers.)

So in other words, Sous Vide is food science at it's best - at least what I've seen and tasted so far.

Sous Vide salmon - Take note of how the salmon broke. Just cooked to flaking point. Mindblowing texture. No knife was used.

What is Sous Vide?

Sous Vide means under a vacuum. The technique refers to cooking food in vacuum sealed plastic in a water bath at lower than normal cooking temperatures for a longer time. But why go through all the trouble? The answer is simple. The end product has a much more intense flavour and a better texture. Meats are so moist and tender you will be left unbelieving.  

The experiment begins

After a very successful experiment with a stray piece of salmon from a previous salmon crusade: 

Potato crusted salmon on crushed potatoes

Salmon crusted salmon on asian greens

Crispy skin salmon with asparagus and garlic dip

I  continue to exploit this technique like a child exploits all kinds of uses for their newfound toy.

Method

First I portion off my rib eye steak and soak it in a 10%  w/w brine for 10 minutes 

1 kg eye fillet $$$

 While it soaked I prepared a simple garlic thyme marinade

Garlic, Thyme, Olive oil, Soy, Rice vinegar and a splash of brandy

moosh

 Taking the steaks out of the brine, I dried them off with a paper towel and sealed them off in a glad zip bag after sucking the air out with a straw.

With the smallest burner on the stove at the lowest setting I set up a pot of water with a crumpled rectangular cake tin. The tin ensures no direct heat is transferred from the pot.

Lowest of low!

The home lab

After an hour and a half I took the steak out and put it on the pan to give it some colour

Not so pretty

Brushed up

Using whatever juices and remaining marinade that was left in the bag I made a quick sauce to plate up

Looking too well done and possibly dry

Results

So the beef turned out to be just under well done. I was disappointed.  The pang of failure seemed to hit me. The lack of colour and the rareness of the meat really put me off. So. I thought I had reached a point in my cooking where I could no longer pull off dishes without practise.

I gritted my teeth and shoved aside my intense hate for well done steak. Wiping away my tears for wasting my rib eye steak, I took a bite.

 It tasted pretty good! Okay, pretty good was an understatement - Even as a well done steak, it rivals a perfectly cooked medium to medium rare steak in terms of flavour, texture and moisture. This only lead me to wonder how a perfect medium rare sous vide steak would be like... but that's for next time. I'll report in again when I can get my hands on some more rib eye. Oh and I went and got a thermometer so I don't have to use my hand to test the water now haha. Until next time!