Delicious Thai Red Curry
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!
That curry looks so delicious! I’m in Korea, and I like some of the food, but nothing compares to all of the flavors and spices of Southeast Asian food. Thanks for the recipe, I can’t wait to try it! 🙂
I’m glad you like Korean food – I was really worried about it being bland there, but I’ve heard good things. Definitely try it, best curry EVER! I’m totally craving one now xx
Thai red curry receipe DON’T USE SOY SAUCE!!! You can look it up in any coookobk. You can’t substitute SOY SAUCE for FISH SAUCE! The TASTE is different!! Very Different. But instead you CAN substitute FISH SAUCE for SALT!!!!! Don’t know how they say you can use SOY SAUCE instead of FISH SAUCE!
Yum! I’m moving to Thailand in August and am very excited about the food. After reading this, I think I will have to take cooking classes so I can learn from the experts. Will give this recipe a try to awaken my Thai taste buds before I head out 🙂 Thanks!
You definitely need to take a cooking class. It’s really great as they walk you through everything. Where in Thailand are you moving and for how long? (I’m so nosey!) Ahh thinking of Thai food makes me hungry…
Good stuff! I’ve made something silmair several times. I also like to add the peel of an orange to steep in the warming coconut milk in order to make chocolate-orange ice cream. Heaven! I’ve also made a cane-sugar-free version using unsweetened chocolate and pureeing some dates into the mixture. That version was more like frozen pudding, which is pretty damn good!
Hi Izy. I’m moving to Ko Samui indefinitely to do some writing and editing for the HeadingThere site. Booked my flight the other day and it was like…right…so I’m actually doing this!! A bit scary but so exciting. Where are you headed next?
Hey Sophie. How exciting! You’re going to love Thailand, have you been before? make sure you make your way to Chiang Mai. At the moment I’m at coachella in Palm Springs, and then I’m heading home to New Zealand for a few weeks, then Hong Kong and moving to Spain 😀 – it’s all very exciting! looking forward to following your adventures xo
Sounds amazing! You will have loads to write about in the coming months, I look forward to reading 🙂 I haven’t been to Thailand before, no, so it’s all very exciting. I’m setting up my personal blog at the moment, getting inspiration from all the wonderful travel bloggers out there!