Red Curry

Sooooo, after a bit more of a month upon my return to Europe, and after stuffing my face with all the Mediterranean goodness that Spanish food represents, I started to crave a little bit of those spicy, sweet and sour deliciousness that is Asian food. However, I live now in a pretty small town in northern Spain, where people tend to be very conservative about their food and well, as it always happens in small towns, the Asian food is scarce to be the least brutal on the definition (The guys at the Oat Meal have it pretty much figured out: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/asian_food). So, what to do? What to do? Well, I tried to find out where the Asians living in town got their things, most of them ordered in bulk from big places, which to be honest didn't really work for me. It was until after a couple of weeks of continuous research (and by research I mean carefully harassing every single Asian looking person I could find; which is ok, I am Asian-ish myself) that I heard the rumors of a pretty well stock Asian Supermarket in a town nearby. So, armed with the sole promise of Asian goodies and some sort of "directions" I embarked myself on a journey (not really, it was, in fact, pretty easy to find) and the bounty was plentiful:

• Pho Noodles
• Fish Sauce
• Oolong Tea
• Sesame Paste
• Dark Soy Sauce
• Udon Noodles
• Lo-Bao
• Egg Noodles
• Szechuan Pepper
• Dry Chili
• Miso Paste
• Pickled Daikon
• Hard Tofu
• Red Curry Paste
• Rice Cakes
• And fresh chilies (a generous gift from the owner of the joint)

The Bounty

I was so fucking happy after this shopping, but the question was now, what to cook? The next day was a particularly cold and rainy day which gave me the craving for something spicy, hot and comforting, which leads me to my recipe for Rice Cakes, Chicken and Tofu Red Curry.

 Enough bragging, lets get to it. First of all, gather the Ingredients:

• Red Curry Paste (You can actually make your own, but I have found that there are store bought pastes that are pretty good and save you the hassle of actually making it, which is in fact pretty awesome).
• Fish sauce (I know what you are thinking: this thing stinks, and it does, but give it a chance, once the smells goes away you will be left with some wonderful saltiness that cannot be achieved otherwise, trust me on this one).
• Pepper and Dry chili flakes (Optional).
• A tin of coconut milk (Again, you can make your own easily, but a tin will do just fine).
• Fresh Thai Red Chilies (You can use as many as you want, with or without seeds, depends on how spicy you want your dish to end up).
• A Small Onion.
• A Red Bell Pepper.
• Chicken Breast ( I just lightly salted and peppered it and sautéed on a pan for a few minutes)
• Hard Tofu
• Spinach
• The Rice Cakes

The Ingredients 

1. First of all you want your rice cakes to be soft; there are different types of rice cakes out there:
1. Fresh: Which you only need to rinse with warm water a little bit.
2. Frozen: Which you only need to defrost.
3. Dry: These are a bit trickier but easy enough. Soak them in water for about 24 hours.

After they are soft you only need to pass them through boiling water for about 2 minutes and strain.
* I like my rice cakes a bit crispy on the outside so I usually lightly fry them before cooking.

2. Now the tofu, slice it in chunks of about 1-2 cm thick, lightly salt them and apply pepper and chili flakes as desired.

The Tofu.

3. Get your pan to a smoking hot temp and brown the tofu slices on both sides. Set them aside.

Crisp that Tofu

4. Now your veggies, just roughly slice them.

The Veggies.

5. Now its time to cook! This will happen fairly fast if your Pan/Wok is pretty hot. So, apply a generous serving of cooking oil, vegetable oil or peanut oil are the preferred, (Anything that has a higher heat tolerance, olive oil will not work) and start with the aromatics: fry your curry paste for a wile in the oil let it develop some character.

6. Continue to add the onion and sauté until the onions are starting to soften.

7. Add the peppers and chilies, continue to sauté.

8. Now it is the turn of the chicken and tofu, you only want them to rise to the same temperature of everything else.

9. Now you can bring everything together with the coconut milk. If you see any big knobs of red curry around, dissolve them in the milk, when it starts to bubble up its moment for the fish sauce, a table spoon should be enough.

10. Let the stinkiness of the fish sauce evaporate and taste. Adjust flavor: you can add a teaspoon of brown sugar at this point to have a sweeter note.

11. Right before plating take your spinach and let it soften on the delicious nectar that your red curry has become.

Almost There.

 And it is serving time. I usually plate this curry in a nice big bowl (that bowl is actually larger than it appears as the chopsticks are cooking chopsticks, just for scale)

Oh Yeah!

By this point you should have tried a delicious spicy, hot, and maybe sweet plate of deliciousness. If you want to twitch it a little bit, you can add a little bit of Tamarind Paste dissolved in a bit of warm water and chick peas to make something very similar to a Phanang Curry which is a Staple of Thai Cuisine. I made this for a Thai friend of mine and the moment he smelled it he was like: Fuck! This smells just like Phanang!

So there you have it, either you are craving something like this, or you want to treat some of your Asian expat friends, this is the recipe for you. See you next time!