Thai Green Curry Paste

Our trip to Thailand last year is one of my all time favourite holidays; the sun, the sea, the spectacular under water world we discovered Scuba Diving, the warm happy people and most memorable of all was the lip smacking food.

I fell in love, which is a little obvious because Thai food is famous for its heat and I am a self confessed slave of spicy food,but the delights of the Thai cuisine are so much greater than that. Fresh ingredients, simple procedures and a gorgeous balance between sweet, sour and spicy. I will always remember my first dish in Thailand, a chicken Massaman curry in Koh Samui; if I go back to Thailand I am definitely going back here again! We spent most of our trip scuba diving on a small island called Koh Tao so the food we ate at each meal was fuss free, simple food, quite often put together right before our eyes. I knew that I had to be able to do this at home and I brought back some essentials from Bangkok to help me out, dried galangal, kaffir lime leaves.







One of the things I ate repeatedly was the Thai Green Curry, with prawns, chicken, vegetarian, I devoured it and it is also the easiest  dishe to make. Being Indian we are quite used to the concept of freshly grinding our masala pastes for curries and so making this is easy peasy for us.  So here's what you do;

What you need:

• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 3 tbsp finely chopped fresh lemongrass
• 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh galangal
• 10 fresh green chilies
• 10 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped onions
• 1/2 cup of fresh coriander leaves and stalks
• 2 tsp chopped kaffir lime leaves (since I use dry, reduce to half if you are using fresh) 
• ¼ cup of sweet basil leaves
• 1 tbsp shrimp paste or soy sauce if you want it vegetarian.

How:

• All you really need to do is grind all the ingredients together. This quantity gives me enough for a curry for six people, so tweak the proportions as you need. You can also store it in the refrigerator and it will stay good and fragrant for upto a week.

Thai green curry post coming up as soon as I get a better picture of it.

Italian Tray Bake

There are just some crazy days when I wish there was a way that I could just dream up a dinner and it would materialize in my kitchen! This recipe is just one step away from it. It takes about five minutes to put together and an hour in the oven later it is a flavorful, wholesome dinner ready to be devoured. Im  eternally grateful to Nigella Lawson for opening up the world of tray bakes for me. There are no real rules to making this dish and I tweak the recipe based on what I have in my fridge.

I have got here a basic structure that you can play with as you please.

What you need:
3 large potatoes unpeeled, cut into 1″ chunks
8 chicken thighs (bone in, skin on)
8 Italian sausages or any sausage you have on hand.

My tray going into the oven

6-7 sprigs rosemary
zest and juice of one lemon (washed)
6-8 large cloves garlic, peeled and cut into chunks
1 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon table salt)
lots of ground pepper
1/4 cup olive oil

How:

• Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius. Place prepared potatoes, garlic, chicken and sausages in large mixing bowl.
• Strip all but two or three of the sprigs of rosemary and mince the leaves finely, to get about two teaspoons’ worth of chopped rosemary. Combine rosemary leaves with the lemon zest and juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, and pour over potato/meat mixture in bowl. Toss gently to coat everything with the dressing.
• Spoon this mixture (in a single layer) onto a large, shallow roasting pan (you don’t want it too deep, or it won’t brown nicely). Once you have the chicken (skin up) and sausages evenly nestled in the pan with the potatoes and garlic, tuck the two remaining sprigs of rosemary in. Using the spoon to get the last of the lemony olive oil dressing out of the mixing bowl, drizzle the chicken and sausages with the last drops.
•  Bake for 50 minutes or so, until the chicken and sausages are golden and the potatoes are cooked through.

Ready to eat with a side of a fresh salad!

I have also used mushrooms, onions, carrots, sweet potatoes, peppers, basically anything I had on hand to add to the tray and watched the flavours come alive after being roasted.