Unlike many of the Thai curries you find in the US, this one doesn't have any coconut milk and is quite a bit thinner as a result. The recipe comes from "Thai food" by David Thomson, which I found in the San Carlos library. Review: acceptable; the curry is so thin that once you pour it over the rice, all of the liquid goes immediately to the bottom of the bowl and it becomes something like rice soup. The recipe is quite easy, though (except for endlessly pounding the curry paste with a mortar and pestle). Also, I used chicken broth, which I think was a little too heavy for the dish; Fish broth would be much better I think.
The orange color basically comes from the curry paste, which is as follows:
-- 5 dried long red chilies, deseeded soaked and drained (I used Arbol chilies, which are around 15,000 to 30,000 on the Scoville scale, which is somewhat tamer compared to the Thai chilies)
-- large pinch of salt
-- 1 tablespoon chopped galangal (Thai Ginger)
-- 3 tablespoons chopped red shallot
-- 2 teaspoons shrimp paste (this stuff is super potent and very salty)
The overall procedure is:
-- bring about 3 cups of stock to a boil
-- add about 50 g of fish fillet (any fresh water will do) to the broth and simmer briefly until cooked; remove the fish and work into the curry paste
-- return the stock to a boil, season with tamarind water, sugar and fish sauce
-- add the curry paste and return to a boil
-- add the vegetables according to the cooking time (options include bamboo shoots, snake beans, Chinese cabbage, a staircase, tomatoes, spinach)
-- add the remainder of the fish (100 g-200 g) and finish cooking
No comments:
Post a Comment