A Tale of Two Curries - Thai Red Chicken Curry & Beef Vindaloo

For a change of pace, I am going to post about a couple of savoury dishes today. Both of them are curries - despite hating curry or anything highly spiced in my youth, I now adore them, although I don't like my curry so hot that it makes your eyes water.

The first curry, appearing at the top of this post, is a Thai red chicken curry. It is a reader's recipe from page 20 of the January/February 2010 edition of Australian Good Food magazine, from Jane Kelly of Mildura. It cheats in that it uses commercial curry paste rather than requiring you to bang away at a long list of spices in a mortar and pestle, but that suits me - curry in a hurry is always welcome!

The red curry paste gives this curry a nice kick, without making your eyes water. The green of the peas and beans in this recipe contrasts satisfyingly with the red curry, making it a visual as well as a gastronomic treat.

The recipe (with a few tweaks) is as follows:

1 tablespoon oil
1 chopped onion
1 carrot, halved lengthways and thickly sliced
500g chopped chicken fillets (I used thigh cutlets)
150g halved green beans
2 tablespoons thai red curry paste
375ml light coconut milk
120g (1 cup) frozen peas
2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
chopped fresh coriander and rice to serve

Heat the oil in a frypan or wok, then add the carrot and onion and cook until the onion is soft.

Add the chicken, beans and curry paste to the pan and cook until the chicken is cooked through, stirring as necessary.

Add the coconut milk, peas and sweet chilli sauce to the pan, stir well, then reduce the heat and simmer for ~5 minutes until all ingredients are heated through.

Serve the curry on a bed of rice, topped with coriander garnish.



My next dish is Jane Kennedy's beef vindaloo from Fabulous Food Minus the Boombah. This curry tastes fantastic! It has the just right amount of flavour and kick, and is a satisfying meal. Unlike Jane, I served it with standard rice, because I was not in the mood to make Jane's cauliflower "rice" (as Jane believes that rice is a serious "boombah" food for her, she makes faux rice from cauliflower).

This book contains Jane's own recipes that she designed to feed her family and herself great, tasty food without piling on all the calories. Australian audiences would know Jane from her television work in Frontline, a spoof of current affairs shows, and her work behind the scenes with Working Dog Productions.

Accordingly to this article, Jane has had her beef vindaloo recipe laboratory analysed, and it has only 60% of the calories of a standard takeaway beef vindaloo. As it is the dish which she is most proud of, I won't provide the recipe here - if you are interested in the recipe, you will have to check out her book.

Have a great weekend!