I love making curries. They are easy and amazingly delicious. While I primarily will make Indian curry, Thai makes a nice alternative for 'curry night'. Many people think of the simple cumin curry when they hear the word "curry", but in all actuality a curry is a type of dish with food in a sauce, kind of like a thick stew, typically served over rice. There are many curry recipes. Curries from India typically are tomato based, heavily seasoned, usually with cumin, are served with Basmati rice, while curries from Thailand are coconut based, seasoning includes lemongrass and ginger, and served over sticky rice. There is an Indian curry that bridges with Thai, a coconut curry called Korma, which is one of my favorites. I will post that someday soon for sure.
Today I worked on a Thai Red Curry. I had two different sources for flavoring the coconut milk, one being the standard red curry paste that you can find at your grocery store, and the other being a packet of dried herbs I got in St Augustine at Old Spice Traders. You can get the seasoning packet online, along with the special rice I used, a green bamboo flavored sticky rice.Thai Red Curry typically has potatoes, various colored red bell pepper slices, choice of meat or tofu. I didn't have anything on hand but tofu and chick peas, which I consider my "curry staple" since that mix goes great in every curry I have tried. I also added green peas to the red curry, which added a little more flavor and was quite yummy.
To make the curry with the dried herbs I used 2 tsp of the powder, 1 tsp olive oil, stirred to a paste, then added half a can of coconut milk (the other half was used for the store bought paste). I simmered this for an hour to get the flavors to mix together. Then I added my 'curry staple' of tofu, chick peas, and green peas, simmering for 20 minutes, then served over the sticky rice.
The image above is of the curry I made with the standard paste, the one to the right with my spice packet. Both were great, but the one made with the spice packet seemed to have a little more kick, which Ryan and I prefer.
