Red curry

The plainest of the coconut curries, thinner than phanaeng and hotter than green.

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

Ingredients

• 700 g pork loin, in thin slices
• 400 ml coconut cream
• 500 ml coconut milk
• 5 tablespoons red curry paste
• 200 g bamboo shoots, in strips
• 150 g green beans, in lengths
• 6 kaffir lime leaves, torn
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• 2 handfuls Thai sweet basil
• 2 long red chillies, sliced

Method

1. THINNER THAN PHANAENG AND HOTTER THAN GREEN, and that is its place among the curries here. It is the plain one: no peanut, no dry spice, no reduction to a paste. If it ends up thick you have made phanaeng by accident.
2. Crack the paste in coconut cream. 200 ml boiled hard on its own 4 minutes until it splits and the oil rises, then the paste fried in that oil 3 minutes until it darkens and runs red.
3. Pork in, turned 2 minutes.
4. The rest of the cream and all the coconut milk in. The generous liquid is deliberate -- this is a curry you ladle, not one you spoon.
5. Fish sauce and palm sugar in. Simmer gently 12 minutes, never a hard boil.
6. Bamboo shoots in, 5 minutes; beans in, 4 minutes.
7. Lime leaves for the last 2 minutes.
8. Heat off, basil folded through to wilt in the residual heat only.
9. Taste. It should be salty and hot with sweetness only in the background. If it tastes rounded and mild, more fish sauce rather than more paste.

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