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Thai Green Chicken Curry

5 from 3 reviews

This is a fresh, tasty curry with vibrant flavours and enough heat to be warming but not too much to drown the rest of the flavours. The secret is in the paste.

Tweaked a little from a Nigel Slater recipe

Ingredients

Scale

For the curry paste -

  • 4 lemongrass stalks, outer layers and ends removed
  • 6 medium-hot green chillies, de-seeded - the medium sized ones work for me
  • 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
  • 5cm (2 inch) piece of ginger, peeled
  • 2 shallots, peeled
  • 4 tablespoons chopped coriander
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • the zest of 1 lime
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
  • a good grinding of black pepper

For the curry -

  • 1kg (2lb) chicken boned breasts
  • 2 tablespoons oil for frying
  • 250g (9oz) mushrooms, quartered
  • 400ml (13floz) tin of coconut milk
  • 400ml (13floz) chicken stock
  • 8 kaffir lime leaves
  • 125g (4 1/2oz) sugar snap peas
  • 1 tablespoon nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
  • 1 tablespoon bottled green peppercorns, drained
  • the leaves from a large bunch of basil (about 20g), shredded
  • 15g (3/4 oz) coriander, roughly chopped

Instructions

  1. For the curry paste, put all the ingredients into a food processor and whizz to a thick paste. Transfer to a glass jar with a lid and refrigerate.
  2. For the curry, bring a large pan of water to the boil and poach the chicken breasts in it for 15 minutes or until they are no longer pink and cooked through. Remove from the water and allow to cool. Now using your fingers, shred the chicken into bite sized shreds and put aside until later.
  3. Warm the oil in a casserole and lightly brown the mushrooms.
  4. Now pour in the coconut milk, stock, kaffir lime leaves, sugar snap peas, 4 tablespoons of the curry paste, the fish sauce, the peppercorns and half of the chopped herbs. You will need to be flexible on the amount of paste that you need depending on the heat of the chillis and also your heat preference. Often I need all the paste, but not always.
  5. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 10 minutes. At this stage taste to check the seasoning and whether you want to add more curry paste. Adjust accordingly and then add the cooked chicken.
  6. Simmer for 5 minutes, before stirring in the last of the chopped herbs.

Keywords: fresh, paste, spicy