Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Experimental Cookery 'Tuesday' #31: Green Thai Curry

As I mentioned last week, this one required a food processor, which I didn't have. Now, as we all know, the traditional means by which one acquires kitchen appliances is marriage, so I headed out to the toaster aisle in the supermarket to find a girl who sought a toaster...

It turned out that trying to put together a wedding inside a week was over-ambitious, so I went to Argos instead.

On Monday, I made the mistake of pre-judging this meal. I was annoyed, for not only had Morrisons let me down, but Tesco proved surprisingly resilient to the notion of letting me buy the actual ingredients I needed. In the end, I was able to track almost everything down, being forced only to substitute half a real onion for some spring onions, and some lime zest for lime leaves. Still, it was annoying.

And when you factor in the fact that the core of this curry was prawns, it was not looking good.

Putting the curry together was remarkably easy. In particular, it was nice letting the machine handle chopping the ginger. Unfortunately, I did make rather a mess when I dropped the lid of the food processor on the floor while pouring the mix into my wok, but that's not really Jamie's fault.

It was a nice curry. I was very surprised. It was also so incredibly hot that my teeth actually hurt afterwards. This was maybe not the best thing ever. Still, I quite liked it.

I'm not sure I'll have this again. Certainly, I don't expect to cook it again for myself. However, I might keep it in reserve for one of those times when someone comes round for dinner. (Assuming said person likes really hot curries, and isn't allergic to coconut.) Still, I have to give the mark for this one, which takes the "Easy Curries" chapter to 6-2.

This marks the end of the curries chapter, which has been my absolute favourite of the book so far. Sure, the stir-fries was a 5-0 whitewash, but this chapter still had it beat: those curries I liked I really liked, and I now have a freezer absolutely packed with meals for the next few weeks. Huzzah!

The weakest link in this chapter was definately the Aloo Gobhi, which I didn't like (and I've really come to dislike cauliflower). The highlight is difficult to pick out. My favourite was probably the Chicken Tikka Masala, but that was already an old favourite. That being the case, I think I'll go with the Leftover Curry Biryani, as this was something I hadn't had before. I never did get around to trying his method for preparing rice - I'll try to get to that at some point, if and when I get a finer collander.

The next chapter is entitled "Lovin' Salads", and the first entry is a "Dressed Green Salad", which doesn't sound too inspiring. It's also true that this isn't a meal in and of itself; it's supposed to be consumed alongside something else. Still, I shall review it on its own merits, or at least try to do so. There are ten salads, and then I'm skipping soups (once I'm done with the breakfasts, I'll switch to doing the soups for lunch), and into the mince chapter. So, that's something to look forward to at least.

1 comment:

Kezzie said...

This is one I usually make when people come over for dinner (I do my own thing with it though- including aubergines, brocili, courgette, carrots in it. And chicekn, not prawns). I'm impressed you have done it from scratch- I use the green paste (bought from oriental supermarket). The good thing about doing that, is you can use as much curry paste as you want, so if (like my Mum) you don't really like Hot, you can reduce the amount of curry paste to make it milder.