Kaeng som

A thin sour curry with no coconut milk at all, soured with tamarind and sharpened at the end.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains curry paste, which usually contains shrimp paste, fish, fish sauce.

Ingredients

• 500 g firm white fish fillet, in large chunks
• 1 litre water
• 5 tablespoons sour curry paste
• 5 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 200 g green beans, in lengths
• 200 g white radish, in batons
• 150 g cabbage, in wedges
• 100 g green papaya, in batons

Method

1. NO COCONUT MILK AT ALL, and that is what makes it this curry rather than any other on the site. It is thin, aggressively sour and bright orange, and a spoonful of coconut milk 'to soften it' turns it into something else entirely.
2. Because there is no fat to carry the paste, it is dissolved in water rather than fried. Whisk the paste into 200 ml of the water until smooth, then add the rest. Fried in oil as the other curries are, the oil floats in beads on a broth that has nothing to emulsify it.
3. Bring it to a simmer and give it 10 minutes before anything goes in, so the paste cooks out and stops tasting raw.
4. Tamarind, fish sauce and palm sugar in.
5. VEGETABLES BY HARDNESS: radish 8 minutes, beans and papaya 5, cabbage 3. They are meant to keep their bite; this is not a long-cooked curry.
6. Fish in last, 4 to 5 minutes, laid on top and not stirred. Chunks break up at a touch once they are cooked.
7. TASTE AND PUSH THE SOURNESS FURTHER THAN FEELS RIGHT. The balance here is sour first and salty second, with heat behind both and sweetness only as a brake. If it tastes balanced in the pan it will taste flat with rice.
8. More tamarind if it needs it, not lime -- lime is a different, brighter acid and it belongs in the soups, not here.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes