Thai food, believe it or not, is quite pantry friendly. Two of the key ingredients to make curry (coconut milk, and Thai curry paste) are available in high quality, canned form. While I have made Thai curry paste from scratch in the past, it is a lot of work, involving a mortar and pestle and a hunt for many hard-to-find ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime leaf. You can approximate the taste of home-made curry using the canned ingredients. The curry paste that I use has just a few ingredients, all of which are easily pronounced: chili, garlic, shallot, lemon grass, salt, spices, galangal.
Thai Green Curry
- 1/2 red onion, sliced
- 2 carrots, sliced
- 1 can curry paste
- 1 can coconut milk
- Tofu or chicken, cut into cubes
- 1/2-1 serrano chili, sliced (optional–curry paste is already hot, so if you are sensitive to spice, omit the extra chili)
First saute the onion in oil. After it softens, add the sliced carrot and chili. When the carrot and onion has some color, add the chili paste and cook for a few minutes until fragrant, then add the coconut milk and one can water.
Carrots, onion and curry paste
Chicken simmering in green coconut curry
When boiling, add the chicken or tofu and simmer for 10 minutes. Most any other vegetables (i.e. broccoli, peppers, green beans) or protein (e.g. tempeh, beef) can be substituted or added. Serve with basmati rice.
The finished dish
Another one of my favorite Thai dishes is green papaya salad (Som-Tum). Traditionally, this dish is PACKED with chillis and can make you really sweat, but at home, you can control the spice-level. Since green papayas are hard to come by, I started making this dish with jicama–it provides the same crunch as green papaya with a little extra sweetness. I think Jicamas are an underutilized vegetable, they have just a touch of sweetness and can pick up the flavors of whatever dish they’re in. Jicamas can now be found in many supermarkets, they look like a smaller, smoother celery root.
Thai Jicama Salad
- Jicama
- Cherry tomatoes
- Roasted peanuts
- Thai or serrano chili
- Chopped fresh cilantro
- Fish sauce
- Freshly squeezed lime juice
- Sugar
Peel and halve the jicama. To cut it into sticks, slice each half, then stack the halves and slice again.
Mix the jicama with the halved cherry tomatoes, roasted and chopped peanuts, a chopped chili (or to taste), and cilantro. Mix 2 T of fish sauce, the juice of a lime and 1 T sugar and pour the mixture over the salad.
Toss and serve.
The final salad
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3 Comments
We usually play it safe — but we decided to try your curry chicken recipe for dinner tonight. We feel so proud and accomplished. The recipe was easy to execute and the result was GREAT (“curry-licious!” says Andy). Thanks!
wow this looks delicious! ive been playing around with thai curries because they seem like a version of a stir-fry but fancier and have taken to this idea: prepping veggies ahead and putting them in jars. it was inspired from your post a few months back about opening the fridge and seeing whats there…. i decided id cook dinner and once i was all sated, i had the energy to think beyond the moment. instead of cleaning up, i chopped a bunch for the week ahead and it made everything easy… veggie scrambles in no time… and barely any cleanup for the nightly meals.. fun times with multi-color veggies… cant wait to make the jicama salad.
That sounds like a great way to save time midweek! However, once prepped, chopped or peeled, vegetables start losing nutrients due to exposure to the air and oxidation. How long did your vegetables seem fresh? 2 Ways you can minimize oxidation is to chop them into larger pieces, and store them in an air tight bag. Check out our lettuce storage tip for how to suck the air out of a zip lock.