July 23, 2008

* With apologies to Shipscook and Avrilo...

The best part for me is when I lean forward over the hob a little and inhale deeply, gladly accepting a thousand liquid spears slicing neatly through my head, each leaving behind shining citrus vapour trails in my glowing grey matter.

By this stage, a splash of warm groundnut oil is being tossed together with four or five smashed and sliced garlic cloves, one thick stalk of stripped, bashed and obliterated lemon grass, a chopped onion, a thumb of freshly sliced and mashed ginger, six or seven roughly-hewn birds eye chillis with their seeds left in, and two standard packets of fresh supermarket-bought coriander washed and sliced to a heady mulch, all drenched in the juice of two or three freshly squeezed limes.

While that goo was cooking up and bedding down, four or five decent-sized organic chicken breasts were chunked up bite size - and they, too, get thrown into the mix.

You stir the lot through, allowing the green curd to billow out clouds of citrus and herb steam through your kitchen and home as the chicken cooks through, then pour in a couple of cans of coconut milk (cheat one), a litre of chicken stock (cheat two), the juice of another couple of limes, and then a decent splash of naam plaa (Thai fish sauce), whack up the heat for ten minutes, stirring constantly, then lower it down and let it bubble gently for a good half an hour to allow the chillis to permeate the sauce, stirring and tossing the meat through occasionally.

Five minutes before you're ready to make rice, stir in another packet of chopped and washed (and mostly destalked) coriander. Pop your rice on, throw the squished remains of one or two of the limes in with it, along with a lemon grass stalk, discarding both when the rice is done after ten minutes or so.

Serve the rice and Thai green curry with a couple of wedges of lime each, and yet more freshly destroyed coriander sprinkled over the top.

Here's one I made earlier: Although I was forced to go a bit mad with the uber-aromatic sauce...

thaigreen

Serves four. Or two greedy bastards ;)

Enjoy...