Curry Courage
Not a really great photo, I know. And I didn't purposely choose only green veggies!
I extremely love Thai curry. My favourite is probably the green (basil) one, but I'd happily eat any of them. I decided to make curry because I had picked up green curry paste on a trip to Lonsdale Quay Market. For a long time I had been looking to see where I could buy Kaffir lime leaves but had trouble, so I was quite ecstatic when I discovered them at one of the stores in the market (along with curry leaves). I bought a bunch and froze them, not knowing when I would get the chance to pick up any more. I think I've only used the lime leaves once in the past year, but it was just one of those esoteric ingredients I had to have! I also picked up three curry pastes (yellow, red, green) because the woman there said that it's not worth it to make your own curry paste for the amount of spices and things you need to buy. She verbally gave me a recipe for Thai curry, which my friend wrote down but I'm not sure if I ever did because for some reason I thought I would just remember it. Anyway a year later I finally got the courage to try and make curry. Why courage? Because it's one of my favourite things to eat, and I didn't want to screw it up and have sad curry.
Since I wasn't sure where the recipe was and my friend is out of the country and not always easily reached, I just googled some curry recipes to get a general idea of the proportions. This is a truly rare thing for me to do - usually I follow recipes exactly and am too scared to try coming up with my own. So I started adding things to a big pot. Curry paste, coconut milk, vegetable stock, eventually some vegetables and tofu. It smelled right but the taste wasn't what I wanted. I added too much curry (who knew 2 tablespoons would be too much?) so it was burn your tongue off spicy, I overcooked the veggies by adding them to the curry too early, and the tofu just tasted like tofu (it didn't soak up any of the curry flavour). Overall, definitely not the most successful meal I've made but it's a baby step towards becoming comfortable making up my own recipes. It was a good starting off point for perfecting a curry recipe which I can eagerly devour and share (that if I'm lucky will taste like the amazing curry at Montri's.)
8 comments:
I totally disagree with the lady who sold you that packet of paste. Making your own green curry paste is really delicious. I have just made it for the first time the other day. You can find the recipe on green curry on my blog. It's really more flavourful and have the kick than those paste sold in the market. And it's not very troublesome nor complicated to make. You can make a big bowl of the paste and then freeze it for later use.
Aww, good for you for trying something that's not precisely following a recipe :)
i bought thai red curry paste from the sunrise market last week and my curry was also too spicy...but i added in the whole packet! whoops!!
the cooking ninja: Thanks for linking to that awesome looking recipe. :) I commented on your blog!
s: Yes it's a step... :)
kickpleat: I think the red curry paste is the spiciest one! Haha and putting the whole package in couldn't have helped.
Thanks for dropping by my blog. :) I have checked for you and it says that if you can try replacing the shrimp paste (if necessarily) with 1 - 2 tsp fish sauce. It think it will still taste very good. If you can cook it with kaffir leaves, it will be more fragrant. :) Hope this helps.
Oh, I'm going to add another note in my green curry recipe for those who are using prepackaged ones - on how to make it tastier. I'll do it later in the evening.
the cooking ninja: I appreciate you checking for me! Unfortunately I can't eat fish sauce either. I forgot that I had bought a Thai vegetarian cookbook recently so I might try out that recipe too. :)
I actually quite like the first picture o_0 but aaaanyhoooo. You didn't tell me you made curryyyyy :o I love curry but I've never made it--- perhaps I shall try!
candice: you should try making curry. do any of your family members know how? maybe they can tell you the secrets.
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