Thai Green Curry - Beef

⇐ Recipes from cookery books

This makes a good green curry, but I think I prefer David Thompson's substituting beef and aubergines for the fish and sweetcorn.

Adjust the number of chillies depending on which type you can get and how hot they are - the number in the recipe is ridiculously large if the chillies are at all hot

If you can't get all the ingredients, improvise or omit, as long as you have most of them

Make chilli paste an hour or so in advance

Use good quality coconut milk, e.g. Blue Dragon

Ingredients

2 tins thin coconut milk

300g beef sirloin or similar, cut into 2.5x2x1 cm slices

2 tbsp fish sauce

½tbsp palm sugar (or ordinary sugar)

10 small white aubergines, quartered (or 1 ordinary aubergine)

3 fresh red chillies, quartered lengthwise

3 kaffir lime leaves, shredded

15g fresh basil leaves

for the chilli paste

20 small fresh green chillies, roughly chopped

1 tbsp sliced shallot

1 tbsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp sliced galangal (or ginger if you cant get)

½ stalk lemongrass, sliced

2 tsp salt

1 tsp shrimp paste - I always omit because I'm not keen on taste and smell

½ tsp kaffir lime zest

½ tsp chopped coriander root or stem

6 white peppercorns

Method

1. Pound all the chilli paste ingredients - except the chillies - in a pestle and mortar, or a blender. Stir in chillies
2. Heat half a tin of coconut milk in the pan, add the chilli paste and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add the beef and the rest of the coconut milk and bring to the boil
4. Add the fish sauce and sugar and boil for 2 more minutes, then add aubergine and chilli and cook for a minute. Stir in lime leaf and boil for a minute.
5. Remove from heat and add basil leaves

Thai Cooking Kurt Kahrs