My husband loves a curry, me, not so much. He could eat a curry several times a week, whereas I would suggest something different after a meal or maybe two of them. Tonight however, I made a curry supper for us with leftovers to spare! Things we do for love, eh? This is a Thai style curry, not the Indian flavours that he loves so much.
Psst, this is an easy curry, as I used an authentic Thai curry paste by Mae Ploy. Making your own curry paste is easy enough, especially if you have a food processor or a large pestle and mortar, but you do need to make a trip to a specialist supermarket, such as Wing Yip or Chinatown to get a long list of fresh aromatics. An extra tip for you here, a few of these fresh aromatics (lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric, etc.) can be frozen as they are or you can make the paste and freeze into portions. So if you love curries, make haste to make paste and freeze for future use!
A few times when I taught students to make Thai curries, some asked if they could have a vegan version. This led me to do some research about these curry pastes. Did you know shrimp paste and fish sauce are extensively used in Thai cooking? Yes, even the Buddhist monks would eat curries containing meat, poultry and seafood. I was a bit puzzled as I originally thought the monks are vegetarians. Well, apparently if the food had been cooked and offered to them as a gift, the monks would accept the offering, otherwise ordinarily they would prepare vegan foods for themselves. So, vegan / vegetarian holidaymakers to Thailand please take note, if you want completely vegan food, you need to specify no fish, no prawns, etc., as these ingredients will feature in the curry paste, even though it is a tofu and veggie dish. At home, if you make your own curry paste, you can omit the shrimp paste and fish sauce, substitute with light soy sauce or use a vegan “fish sauce”, which is made from seaweed (ThaiTaste does this version).
Back to our supper, tonight’s was a substantial butternut squash, paneer and mixed bean curry, here’s how I made it.
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy Yellow Curry Paste (this one is milder than the red or green versions)
1 tin coconut milk
FIsh sauce, to taste
1 lime, cut into wedges to squeeze over
25g coriander, washed and dried, rough chopped leaves and finely chopped stalks
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed, seeds removed
2 small onions, peeled and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely finely chopped
1 pack paneer cheese, cubed
1 tin mixed beans, drained and rinsed
Sunflower oil
Fried onions or chopped salted peanuts, optional
– I like to use a shallow casserole with a lid, find one that is big enough to hold all the ingredients ideally in one layer. On low to medium heat, shallow fry the paneer cheese in a little sunflower oil until they are golden brown all over, remove. This will take about 15 minutes or so to cook, too high heat can burn the crust.
– Add a little more oil into the pan and gently fry the onions, add a pinch of salt, for 10-15 minutes, until softened and sweet. Add the garlic, stir and cook for 1 minute. Add the curry paste, break it up and stir into the onions and garlic, you may need to add a little bit of oil. Cook out the curry paste, so it is amalgamated with the aromatics and not in lumps. Ensure the heat isn’t too high as the paste burns easily.
– Add the cubed butternut squash, stir everything around so every cube is coated with the paste. Now add about 100ml of cold water, turn down the heat and lid on to steam cook the butternut squash for 15 minutes. Make sure the heat is gentle as you don’t want to burn the pan dry, but it needs to be hot enough to produce steam to cook the vegetable. After 15 minutes, check if you need a little more water and cook a bit longer. Mine needed another 15 minutes to fully soften.
– Add the tin of coconut milk to the mix, and a little water to rinse out the tin, also add the fried paneer cheese and a tin of rinsed cooked beans. Gently stir everything together. Taste, at this point you might need some fish sauce, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt, season to your liking. Lid back on, and still on low heat cook for another 10-15 minutes. Don’t boil the mixture, coconut milk can split in high heat.
– Taste again, stir through some of the chopped coriander and some fried onions or chopped peanuts, if using. Dish up, if you want more freshness, add more of the toppings on individual servings and a wedge of lime to squeeze over. I made some steamed brown rice to serve alongside. This recipe serves 4-6 people, so now I’m feeling quite happy that we have plenty of leftover for tomorrow’s supper!
I hope you have learned some tips on this post and will try out this recipe. Hope you like it!
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