Green Chicken Curry (Thai-style)

Let's get down to the terminology. "Curry" as used to describe Thai dishes is a translation of the Thai word "Gaeng" which is used by the Thais to refer to a kind of thin spicy soup-like dish eaten with rice.

Sometimes people may be surprised when their Thai "curry" arrives in a soup bowl and indeed feels more like a soup than the Indian thicker more sauce-like dish they were expecting.

Personally, I think that if you're going to eat something with rice, it's better to err on the thicker side so that's what I'll be doing with this dish.

Another thing: should you buy a ready-made green curry paste or make your own? Make your own! It's fresher, tastier and you can control how hot you want it or tweak it to your own personal preferences. And it's fun! And if you do it right, it tastes miles better than some bland jar from your supermarket.

Serves: 4
Cost per person: around 4 zl (40 Thai Baht, 81 UK pence, 95 Euro cents)

What do we need?

For the paste:

- 2-3 shallots or 1/2 a bunch of spring onion (leaves)
- a handful of basil leaves
- a handful of coriander leaves
- chopped up coriander root from the coriander leaves
- 3 green chillies
- 2 inch of ginger
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- zest of 1 lemon
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- a pinch of salt
- tsp black pepper corns (dry roasted)
- tsp cumin seeds (dry roasted)
- tsp coriander seeds (dry roasted)

For the stir fry:

- 400 g chicken breast
- vegetables of choice (onion/ radish/ peppers/ carrot work well)

For the sauce:

- a nice glug of fish sauce
- a nice glug of soy sauce
- a cup of coconut milk (dissolve 1/4 of a bar of creamed coconut in hot water)

All you Thai purists out there will have noticed that I've missed out some key ingredients which are bloody hard to get outside of SE Asia. Here they are:

- galangale (it's a bit like ginger in appearance but with a sharper taste. I've just doubled up the ginger instead)
- kaffir lime leaves (useless dried, so I've just used extra lemon to compensate)
- lemon grass (just used lemon juice to compensate)
- kaffir lime peel (just used lemon zest to compensate)
- shrimp paste (you could substitute by adding a couple of anchovies into the paste mix, but I just splashed in some extra fish sauce to compensate)

Trust me: the result tastes good even without those 5 authentic but omitted ingredients.

Shall we get cracking?

1. Get your ingredients together

Don't forget the basil like I nearly did!

2. Dry roast the pepper corns, cumin and coriander and transfer to a coffee grinder. Grind up real good.

3. Add the rest of those paste ingredients to the grinder and grind like you've never ground before!

4. Get ready to stir fry! You need the wok nice and hot. Add a little oil. I'll use coconut oil for a more authentic taste.

5. Stir fry the chicken to seal (1-2 mins)

6. Get the veg in and stir (30 secs)

7. Paste in.

8. Glug in the fish sauce. I use the Cock brand because the name amuses me.

9. Soy sauce in.

10. Coconut milk in. Cook for a further minute until the sauce has slightly reduced. 

11. You should be ready now. The whole cooking process should be over in around 5 minutes. No longer or the chicken will start to "rubber up"

12. Serve with rice (jasmine rice gives you that real Thai feel but any long grain variety will work)

What did all this end up costing?

- chicken: 6.50 zl
- vegetables (peppers and onions): 2 zl
- paste ingredients: 5 zl
- coconut milk and the rest: 1 zl
- rice: 1.60 zl


Total: 16.10 zl
Serves: 4
Per person: 4.03 zl