Thai Red Curry
An extremely versatile dish that works with all of your favorite vegetables and meats.
This is one of the many naturally GF recipes I’ll share with you. If you like spice, South and Southeast Asia are the place to go looking for GF recipes, because tons of recipes from that part of the world are! From Thailand, we have many varieties of what we call “curry” in English, and the red variety is one of the most easily recognizable to those of you who may frequent Thai restaurants. It is remarkably easy to make—just a bit of stirring and chopping. It is also extremely versatile. I made the one in the photos with half a pound of frozen shrimp and sea scallops, but you can add anything you like to suit your tastes. Choose your favorite meat/protein, cut into bite-sized pieces, whether it’s pork, tofu, beef, chicken, or seafood, and add it at step 3 below. This is a recipe that works nicely as a vegetarian dish as well. Any of your favorite vegetables will work simmered in this fragrant red curry and coconut milk sauce—potatoes, bell peppers, carrots, eggplant (if you can find Thai eggplants, congratulations!), green peas, snow peas, spinach, mushrooms….take your pick.
Serve with steamed rice. If you want to garnish the curry when it's served, chopped cilantro/coriander or chopped scallions work nicely.
Kitchen utensils for this recipe include a sauce pan (about 2 quarts is good), a sharp knife and cutting board, and a spatula for stirring.
(Continue to bottom for a cat update!)
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon oil (I use coconut oil for this)
2 tablespoons red curry paste from a can
1 14-ounce can coconut milk
½ pound of shrimp or other meat or tofu, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 cups of chopped vegetables (this one has red bell pepper and green peas)
1 tablespoon fish sauce (see note 1)
Salt to taste
Instructions:
Heat the oil in the pan and stir the curry paste into the hot oil
When you can smell the curry (should be a minute or less), add the coconut milk and stir to dissolve the paste in the coconut milk (see note 2)
When the coconut/curry mixture starts to bubble, add the meat and vegetables (see note 3)
Simmer the curry uncovered or partially covered for about 15 minutes and serve (see note 3)
Notes:
If you don’t have fish sauce, you can add extra salt. I have seen people substitute soy sauce for fish sauce, but you need to be careful, because most soy sauce is not gluten free! If you use soy sauce, be sure it is marked gluten free; tamari is a similar product that is typically gluten free.
If after stirring and heating a bit, you still see lumps of either coconut cream or curry paste, I’d suggest using whisk to help break it up.
Depending on the size/texture of the ingredients, the curry may take shorter or longer to cook—tofu, for example just needs to be warmed through. Also, the meat could take longer than the vegetables to cook, depending on what vegetables you use. Potatoes will need to go in at the same time as the meat to cook properly, while spinach cooks very fast, so should be added just a couple of minutes before serving.
Cat update:
Seraphina has been very happy to have her Paw home every day this week! You can see how relaxed she is. I even managed to trim a few of her very sharp front nails this morning when she was dozing—no, she does not like having her nails trimmed!