Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Vietnamese Lemongrass Curry

You keep craving the curry.  You have delivery from Indian, then takeaway from Thai, then you keep thinking that if I made this it be so much better.  The fresh aromatics, curry spices, and the smell lingering in your kitchen.  It's just the best. Better than anything a restaurant can throw at you.  You are a curry making genius. Thick aromatic lemony yellow curry that makes you want to dive in and drown in its richness.  Add in a bit of British comedy and a glass a wine. Tidy.



10 ounces of chicken thigh meat, boned and skinned, sliced into small pieces

5 ounces of sweet potato, sliced into chunks
1 inch of ginger, minced
1/4 sweet onion, minced
1 lemongrass stalk
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 serrano chili, deseeded and minced
7 ounces coconut milk, full fat (just don't bother with that bloody lite stuff, it's just regular coconut milk diluted with water, yuck)
1 TBS fishsauce
1 tsp sugar
1 Heaping TBS Thai Yellow curry paste
1/4 tsp turmeric

Make sure first to get that lemongrass pounded with a meat tenderizer and then remove shredded string inner soft flesh and get that nicely minced up.  Chop up the tough parts into 3 inch chunk pieces.  Heat a nice amount of peanut oil in a cast iron frying pan over medium heat.  Toss in all together your lemongrass, sweet onion, garlic, ginger, chili.  Give it a good stir about until it softens and gets really fragrant.  Mix in the curry paste and turmeric and get it all mooshed in with the aromatics.  Add a little extra oil,  toss in the extra chunks of lemongrass, and bobble these about with the rest.  Dump in the chicken and give it a good stir about till well coated with spices, aromatics, and the lot.  Add in the fish sauce and sugar and a pinch of salt.  Deglaze the pan with enough water to cover the bottom, toss over the sweet potato chunks and pop the lid on.  Leave at low heat now and let this simmer till the potatoes are just fork tender.  Take the lid off and let the liquid cook down.  At this point in time you can just go ahead and eat this.  An over the top vietnamese kind of stir fry, but then you add the coconut milk and scrap up everything and stir till golden and lovely.

Serve over jasmine rice.

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