Red Curry with Chicken (Thai Style)

A few weeks back, I was in a Thai restaurant with my Mom, trying to expose her to Thai cuisine. We had ordered “green curry with tofu”. My mom was curious about various other dishes and I was trying to explain the contents of those to the best of my knowledge. One of them was the “red curry”.

Last week, I was not in a mood to make anything typically Indian, and since we had this discussion earlier about the Thai curry dishes, I thought of making this dish, which incidentally I had not made for a long time.

Ingredients:

• Chicken (boneless) – 1 to 2 oz.
• Mixed vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, sugar-snap peas, baby carrots, bell peppers etc.) – 2 cups(approx.) cut into medium pieces
• Onions – ½ medium
• Garlic – 1 clove
• Ginger – ¼ inch
• Red Curry Paste – 3 tsp
• Coconut Milk – ½ can
• Fresh Basil leaves – 5 to 6 count
• Fresh Lemon – ½ a lemon
• Oil for frying
• Salt to taste
• Black Pepper- ½ tsp
• Sugar – ½ tbsp

Method:

• Mix the Red Curry Paste along with the coconut milk. Keep it aside.
• Slice the chicken into ½ inch long strips. Coat them with salt and pepper.
• Slice the onions, garlic and ginger.
• Heat a little oil in a wok.
• Stir fry the chicken strips until they are browned a little. Take them out and keep aside
• Add the onions followed by the garlic. Stir fry them for a minute and then add the fresh ginger to it.
• Add the vegetables to it and fry for about 2 minutes
• Add the chicken pieces and give it a quick stir.
• Add the red curry paste mixture and about ½ cup of water for the gravy.
• Let the vegetables cook in the gravy till done. Make sure that the veggies are not overcooked.
• Squeeze ½ tsp of fresh lemon juice and add a little lemon zest to the gravy.
• Tear the basil leaves and stir it in. Turn off the heat.
• Serve this with white or brown rice, preferably with jasmine rice.

Notes:

• Red curry paste is a blend of garlic, ginger (galangal), cumin, coriander, red chilli powder and lemon grass. You may make it from scratch too. I’ll have that recipe posted in the near future. I am quite sure that once you use that, you’ll never go back to the store bought one. However, I used the store bought one to save some time.

• Red Curry is the hottest among the three kinds (i.e. green, yellow and red). Hence one has to be careful with the amount of the paste. You can adjust the level according to your heat tolerance capacity.