Green Coconut Curry with Thai Jicama Salad

Thai food, believe it or not, is quite pantry friendly. Two of the key ingredients to make curry (coconut milk, and Thai curry paste) are available in high quality, canned form. While I have made Thai curry paste from scratch in the past, it is a lot of work, involving a mortar and pestle and a hunt for many hard-to-find ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime leaf. You can approximate the taste of home-made curry using the canned ingredients. The curry paste that I use has just a few ingredients, all of which are easily pronounced: chili, garlic, shallot, lemon grass, salt, spices, galangal.

Thai Green Curry

• 1/2 red onion, sliced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 1 can curry paste
• 1 can coconut milk
• Tofu or chicken, cut into cubes
• 1/2-1 serrano chili, sliced (optional–curry paste is already hot, so if you are sensitive to spice, omit the extra chili)

First saute the onion in oil. After it softens, add the sliced carrot and chili. When the carrot and onion has some color, add the chili paste and cook for a few minutes until fragrant, then add the coconut milk and one can water.

Carrots, onion and curry paste

Chicken simmering in green coconut curry

When boiling, add the chicken or tofu and simmer for 10 minutes. Most any other vegetables (i.e. broccoli, peppers, green beans) or protein (e.g. tempeh, beef) can be substituted or added. Serve with basmati rice.

The finished dish

Another one of my favorite Thai dishes is green papaya salad (Som-Tum). Traditionally, this dish is PACKED with chillis and can make you really sweat, but at home, you can control the spice-level. Since green papayas are hard to come by, I started making this dish with jicama–it provides the same crunch as green papaya with a little extra sweetness. I think Jicamas are an underutilized vegetable, they have just a touch of sweetness and can pick up the flavors of whatever dish they’re in. Jicamas can now be found in many supermarkets, they look like a smaller, smoother celery root.

Thai Jicama Salad

• Jicama
• Cherry tomatoes
• Roasted peanuts
• Thai or serrano chili
• Chopped fresh cilantro
• Fish sauce
• Freshly squeezed lime juice
• Sugar

Peel and halve the jicama. To cut it into sticks, slice each half, then stack the halves and slice again.

Mix the jicama with the halved cherry tomatoes, roasted and chopped peanuts, a chopped chili (or to taste), and cilantro. Mix 2 T of fish sauce, the juice of a lime and 1 T sugar and pour the mixture over the salad.

Toss and serve.

The final salad