Kaeng tai pla

A fiercely hot curry built on fermented fish innards, boiled and strained before anything else.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains curry paste, which usually contains shrimp paste, fish, fish sauce, tai pla, a fermented fish sauce.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons tai pla
300 ml water, for the straining
5 tablespoons southern curry paste
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
400 g firm white fish, in chunks
200 g bamboo shoots, in strips
150 g long beans, in lengths
100 g pea aubergines
1 Thai aubergine, in wedges
700 ml water
8 kaffir lime leaves, torn
2 tablespoons fish sauce

Method

BOIL THE TAI PLA AND STRAIN IT BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENS. Fermented fish innards go into the 300 ml of water, are boiled 10 minutes, and the liquid is strained through a fine sieve while the solids are thrown away. Added whole, the curry is full of bone fragments and is unpleasantly gritty.
That strained liquid is the entire backbone of the dish and there is no substitute for it. Without it this is a thin southern curry with nothing underneath it.
IT IS MEANT TO BE EXTREMELY HOT AND EXTREMELY SALTY. This and the khua kling on this site are the two fiercest pages here, and both are eaten in small amounts with a great deal of plain rice. Toned down it has no identity.
No coconut milk at any point.
Dissolve the paste and turmeric in a ladleful of the 700 ml of water, then add the rest and the strained tai pla liquid.
Simmer 15 minutes so the paste cooks out.
Bamboo shoots in, 8 minutes.
Aubergines in, 5 minutes; beans in, 4 minutes. They should keep their bite.
Fish in last, 4 minutes, laid on the surface and not stirred, or the chunks break up.
Lime leaves torn in off the heat. Taste for fish sauce, and expect to want very little -- the tai pla is already intensely salty.

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