Thai Green Curry

Thai Green Curry

One pot, 20 min, serves 4

Ingredients

green curry paste  3 tbsp
coconut milk       2 tins, full fat
chicken thighs     600g, sliced
green beans        200g
fish sauce         2 tbsp
brown sugar        1 tbsp
makrut lime leaves 4
thai basil         handful
lime               1, juice

Mae Ploy paste, from an Asian supermarket or online. The supermarket brands are weak and slightly bitter, and you end up using half a jar.
Lime leaves keep for months in the freezer and go in from frozen. Without them and the basil it is about 80% of the way there.
Lighter version: swap one tin for light coconut milk, or use two thirds of a tin topped up with water.

Recipe

1. Spoon the thick cream off the top of one tin into the pot. Heat until it splits and the oil comes out.

Don’t shake the tin. You want the solid cream, not the watery bit underneath.

2. Fry the paste in that oil for 90 seconds, until the colour deepens.

This is the step everyone skips. Paste straight into liquid tastes raw.

3. Chicken in, stir to coat, 3 minutes.

4. Simmer 10 minutes:

[coconut milk the rest, fish sauce 2 tbsp, brown sugar 1 tbsp, makrut lime leaves 4]

5. Beans in for 4 minutes. Off the heat, stir in the lime juice and basil:

[green beans 200g, lime 1 juiced, thai basil handful]

Lime and basil go in off the heat or you lose them.

Go easy on the fish sauce until you have tasted it. The paste is already salty.

❄ Freezer
Freeze: cool fully, 3 months. The beans soften, so undercook them if you know it is going in the freezer.
Reheat: from frozen in a pan on low. Don’t boil, the coconut milk splits.