For those who know me, everyone knows I love a good fresh curry. I hadn't had one for ages so I said to my friend that we should make one. We both agreed that we fancied a Thai curry and I found a curry recipe for northern Thailand with peanuts and pork (we swapped pork for prawns). Chiang mai is a Northern Territory in Thailand that has very different food combinations than that of the south. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to go to the north when I went travelling.
As always with curry, you need a good paste otherwise the curry will flop. The chiang mai curry paste consists of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, chillies, salt, galangal (ginger), lemongrass, shallots, garlic, turmeric, shrimp paste and cinnamon all blended together. I'd never used turmeric in a Thai curry before so I was quite excited to see what the results were! (They were no photos of the final result of either the paste of curry in my recipe book).
The paste was fried until fragrant and then the shallots, galangal and peanuts were added. After being cooked for a few minutes, I poured in half a litre of water with some tamarind paste and bought to the boil. I then added the fish sauce and sugar and simmer for about an hour. After an hour, I added the raw prawns and they were simmered for about 15/20 mins while the rice was being cooked. This was also the first time curry that I had never used coconut milk! That's one of the differences between the north and south curries of Thailand.
It was quite a thin curry, but it was extremely tasty and I had never had peanuts and prawns as the two main ingredients in any meal. It was served the rice and garlic chilli spinach
No comments:
Post a Comment