Anyone who hasn’t eaten Thai food is depriving themselves of one of the World’s great cuisines. The use of wonderfully fragrant ingredients in everyday cooking creates dishes which are quite unique in their taste and which, as in the case of Thai curries, are nothing at all like their sultry Indian or sweet and sour Chinese counterparts.
Key ingredients such as lemongrass, galangal (or ginger when galangal is unavailable), pungent fish sauce and zinging fresh limes combine to create culinary Thai masterpieces which positively assault the sensations in a seductive and pleasurable fashion.
Thai flavours are so wonderfully aromatic and elegant that eating Thai cuisine is almost like taking a walk in a beautifully scented garden on a warm, sunny day; in cooking terms there is nothing else quite like it.
One dish which provides a perfect example of the taste bud pleasing array of flavours found in Thai cookery is the popular Green Curry (Kaeng Keow Wan). Thai curries tend to be named after the colour which is predominant in the dish, so red curry is red, yellow curry is yellow and green curry is green – very green; in fact as green as the grass in a summer meadow if it’s made properly.
This simple but sensational recipe brings a whole host of exotic aromas into the kitchen and is based on the classic Thai green curry with fish; however for a vegetarian version, simply omit the fish.
Ingredients for Thai Green Curry with Fish
- 1 fillet of firm boneless white fish cut into chunks
- 1 small aubergine (eggplant) chopped into ½ inch chunks– use two if making the vegetarian option
- 200 ml of coconut milk
- 200 ml of vegetable stock
- 200g tin of straw mushrooms (small button mushrooms are okay if it’s difficult to get hold of straw mushrooms)
- Quarter of a medium green pepper sliced into matchstick sized batons
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp fish sauce (use soy for the vegetarian version)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tbsp green curry paste (a hot and sultry green curry paste recipe)
- 1 inch piece of galangal, or ginger, peeled and sliced into thin batons
For two people
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Preparation for Thai Green Curry with Fish
Cooking Thai green curry with fish couldn’t be simpler. Once the ingredients are prepared it’s a case of everything into a saucepan, stir for a few minutes and hey presto a delicious and authentic Thai meal.
- Warm the coconut milk with the green curry paste in a saucepan, stirring until the paste is fully amalgamated with the milk and the sauce is creamy lime green in colour.
- Add the stock, aubergines, sugar, mushrooms, ginger, fish sauce (or soy) and salt.
- Bring the curry sauce to the boil and cook for two to three minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add the green pepper batons and fish and continue to cook for another four minutes until the fish is fully cooked and changes loses its translucency.
Dish into a large bowl and serve with a bowl of white and fluffy basmati rice and a glass of Singha beer.
Cook’s Tip: For the white fish fillet use a firm white fish which won’t break up during cooking. Cod, hake and haddock are good choices and monkfish is a beautifully tasting, if a more expensive, substitute. The Vietnamese panga fish isn’t very fashionable in some countries, but it works very well in this recipe as it is bone free, doesn’t have a distinctively fishy taste and absorbs the flavours in the sauce wonderfully.
Jack Montgomery - Feature writer, guidebook author, copywriter, blogger and photographer specialising in the Canary Island of Tenerife.
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