Spicy Thai Yellow Curry

After two weeks of craving curry, we finally took a Sunday evening to make our own curry paste….why did we wait so long?

thai yellow curry

Love this stuff!!!!

Ingredients for Thai Yellow Curry Paste

Serves 3.

4-5 dried chilies (soaked in water for 10-15 minutes)
2-3 fresh Thai chilies
1 1/2 teaspoons galangal, peeled and minced
1 1/2 teaspoons of tumeric, minced
1/2 stalk of lemongrass, minced (or about 1 T.)
1 1/2 teaspoons of ginger, peeled and minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 teaspoon of ground cumin seeds
1/3 teaspoon of ground coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons yellow curry powder

Ingredients for Thai Yellow Curry

1 large chicken breast, thinly sliced
1 13.5 oz. can of coconut milk
1- 1 1/2 cups of water
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cups, chopped sweet potato, pumpkin, or other potato
2-3 green onions, chopped
1- 1 1/2 Tablespoons fish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
cilantro or thai basil for garnish
fresh lime, sliced for garnish
salt to taste

Instructions

1. Put all of you curry paste ingredients in a mortar and pestle and pound them until they’re as smooth as possible…this will probably take longer than it will take to cook the curry, but atleast you’re getting a good arm workout.

2. In a medium pot combine the chicken, onion, yellow curry paste and half a can of coconut milk and bring to a low boil.

3. Once the chicken is almost done cooking (this will only be a couple of minutes) add in the sweet potatoes and a cup of water.

4. Reduce heat to a simmer and allow the curry to reduce a bit. The sweet potatoes will take about 12-15 minutes to cook. At this point you can add in the rest of your coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar, and salt. If you need to thin the sauce now is a good time to add the remaining water.

5. Serve with rice and garnish with green onion, cilantro (or thai basil) and fresh lime.

Enjoy!!!

 

Food Coma

Steve and I stuffed ourselves silly during a full day cooking course at Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School. We ate so well in Chiang Mai….mostly we ate tons of Khao Soi (Khow Soy), a delicious yellow curry with egg noodles, chicken, fresh red onion, crispy noodles and lime.

Between stuffing ourselves to oblivion we enjoyed plenty of mojitos at Griffin Bar. I have a sweet spot for Griffin Bar…Egg and his friends are always welcoming and they don’t mind practicing their English. They’ll help you plan a moto trip, whip up a mean mojito (for only 50 Baht), and if you’re lucky they’ll treat you to some live music. Griffin Bar’s street front is completely nondescript and without their sign advertising 50 baht mojitos you probably wouldn’t give it a second look(on Soi 7 off of Moonmaung). Before you know it you’ll be helping Egg hold up the bar and you’ll be many mojitos deep…and each one is stronger than the last.

Mojitos, reggae and impromptu jam sessions

And about that cooking school induced food coma….or maybe it was a mojito induced coma…

Sawat, our cooking instructor at Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School, was AWESOME!!! He was hilarious, his english was nearly perfect and he was patient…far more patient than I would have been. They had a menu of about 18 different dishes so we could choose our favorites to learn how to make. Everything was delicious. For about $30-35 a person we each learned how to make 6 dishes including how to make our own curry paste and Sawat made one of our favorites….green papaya salad.

chiang mai cooking class1

From the top left: curry paste at the market, my homemade curry paste, yellow curry ingredients and the finished product.

We were stuffed after the first three dishes. Steve made: green curry (the paste and the dish), tom yum soup, chicken basil stir fry, fried spring rolls, and bananas in coconut milk. And I made chicken coconut galangal soup, yellow curry (the paste and the dish), cashew chicken, fried big noodles, and mango sticky rice.

Here are some more pics from our day of cooking class.

chiang mai cooking class2

From top left: Sawat (our cooking instructor), Minced chicken for Steve’s Chicken Basil, Cashew Chicken, and sauces and seasonings from the market

chiang_mai_cs_tom_yum_soup

Steve’s Tom Yum Soup

chiang_mai_cs_chicken_basil

Chicken Basil Stir Fry

chiang_mai_cs_coconut_soup_ingredients

For all of our dishes we used super fresh ingredients from the market and their garden.

chiang_mai_cs_roselle

Roselle at the cooking school’s garden.

If anyone is interested in any of the recipes just shoot me a message and I’ll forward a copy to you.