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Roast Pumpkin Red Curry

By • On • In Recipes, Thai

It’s autumn and there are pumpkins everywhere. I love Thai red curry, so this is something similar to that. You don’t have to add MSG, but you’re missing out if you don’t (you can get it in Asian supermarkets).

Ingredients

Serves 8

  • 4 small Hokkaido pumpkins (~1.5kg), peeled and cubed 1.5cm
  • 2tbsp vegetable oil
  • Red curry paste (below)
  • 4 400g tins coconut milk
  • 400g mushrooms, halved or quartered if they are too big
  • 500g potatoes, peeled and cubed 1.5cm
  • 6 shallots, quartered
  • 4 Tbsp fish sauce (to taste)
  • Juice of 2-3 limes (zest for paste)
  • 3-4 Tbsp raw sugar
  • 30 leaves Thai basil (or substitute basil)
  • 3 red peppers, julienned
  • 4 kaffir lime leaves (if you can find them)
  • 8 cardamom pods
  • 8 star anise
  • 1tsp MSG

Red Curry Paste (this can be made in advance)

  • 1 tsp white peppercorns
  • 2 tsp coarse sea salt
  • 16 small red chilies, seeded (not too spicy), sliced
  • 4 lemongrass shoots finely diced
  • Zest of two limes
  • 8 cloves garlic chopped
  • 100g ginger, finely diced
  • 10 coriander stems, sliced
  • 8 shallots, finely sliced

Instructions

Heat oven to 200C.

Halve the pumpkins, scoop out and discard the seeds.  Peel and dice into roughly 1.5cm cubes.  Cover with oil, spread out on oiled foil on a baking tray and roast until starting to char (around 40 minutes).  Move them around occasionally to try to stop them sticking and get even an even roast.

Make the red curry paste by grinding everything together in a pestle & mortar (or food processor if that feels like too much). Add one or two ingredients at a time, in the order above. If your mortar gets full, empty it into a bowl and carry on with the other ingredients.

Add 2tbsp vegetable oil to a large pan (that’ll hold all the ingredients), add the curry paste and fry for 5 to 10 minutes.

Add half a can of coconut milk and stir to combine the paste, then stir in the rest.

Add 2tbsp of the fish sauce and all the other ingredients. Add the roast pumpkin once it’s ready. Let it bubble away for 30 minutes until the potato is cooked. Don’t stir too much, and don’t worry if things start to disintegrate. Add some boiling water if it gets too thick.

Remove from heat, taste and adjust seasoning with the remaining fish sauce (salt), additional palm sugar (sweet) and lime (sour) as needed. Stir in Thai basil.  Serve on it’s own, or with jasmine rice.

Pad Thai
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Pad Thai

By • On • In Recipes, Thai

I read a blog post about Pad Thai, and on my way back to my flat discovered an awesome Thai supermarket (the supermarket even had the exact same tamarind concentrate as David photographed).  Cool coincidence, so I bought (most of) the ingredients.  (Forgot peanuts, bother).

I find it easier to condense a recipe before cooking it so that I can remember it, so this is an adapted version of the blog post version which is itself adapted from The Better-Than-Takeout Thai Cookbook by Danette St. Onge.  It’s easier than I expected, and now I have most of the ingredients, I can see myself cooking it frequently.  Noodles keep for ages, and the prawns can sit in the freezer (I’ll probably end up skipping spring onions and bean sprouts and maybe tofu, and adding chilli and maybe shrimp paste).

Ingredients

  • 115g flat rice noodles
  • 2 tablespoons shallots, finely diced
  • 1 garlic clove, finely diced
  • 3 spring onions, green parts sliced 5cm, white bits finely sliced (they came in bunches of 8, so 8 went in)
  • 12 medium raw shrimp (mine were frozen)
  • 60ml fish sauce
  • 3 tablespoons granulated palm sugar (I used raw sugar, not sure if they are the same)
  • 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
  • 2 eggs
  • 75g bean sprouts
  • 80g pressed tofu (I drilled holes in the tofu carton sat it over a bowl and stacked heavy things on top – I had 4kg of tungsten lying around)
  • 50g roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
  • fresh lime, for garnish

Method

1. Boil noodles 5 minutes, rinse in cold water.
2. Fry shallots, white bits of spring onions and garlic 5 minutes till fragrant add prawns for 5 minutes till cooked through(ish).
3. Add fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind then noodles and leave a minute.
4. Push noodles to side and add eggs, once starting to set, add tofu, 2/3 of bean sprouts, tofu, spring onion and 2/3 peanuts. Add a little water if too dry.
5. Serve sprinkled with spring onion, peanuts, bean sprouts and wedges lime.