Hi all!
I wanted to share with you a Thai Green Curry recipe which I learn from Ya’s Krabi Cookery School which I attended in Krabi a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always loved the Thai green curry cause it seemed to be less spicy and more milky in flavour. The ones we made in the cookery school was so yummy!
But you know, the thing with making by experience and making following a recipe yields a different result. When I made at home, my version was waaayyyy too spicy :/ In Ya’s School, there’s no teaspoon or tablespoon or julienne, but mainly chup chup, and bang bang. Haha chup chup means how many glug of fish sauce that goes into the pot. Bang bang means to flatten the garlic or lemongrass or other ingredients before chopping them.

We learnt 8-9 types of Thai dishes in about 4 hours. I will write more about Ya’s Kraby Cookery School, apparently, Gordon Ramsey had his share of Ya’s cooking there as well!
But first, let’s see how to make the Thai Green Curry Paste and Curry.
Well, first things first, you need some spices, aromatics and herbs such as galangal, onion, garlic, kaffir lime leave, kaffir lime, lemongrass, fresh chilli, coriander, thai basil leaves, coriander seeds, cumin, salt, pepper and belacan. I made a mistake of not adding the basil leaves for the paste because in the recipe booklet, it didn’t state. After I refer the photos again, I saw that there was basil leaves! Oh bummer.
For all these aromatics and herbs, you need to cut them into smaller pieces to ease the blending process. For lemongrass, take only the bottom white part, cut the root off, use a rolling pin or the end of a pestle and crush it so it releases its oil and fiber. Then, use a knife and chop finely.
For kaffir lime (these came from my garden!) Take the peel of the lime, lightly ‘bang bang’ it with the pestle again and chop finely. I realize they don’t use the juice as its too sharp. So I just chuck it back to be a compost.
Now for the kaffir leaves, which is most commonly used in Thai Cuisine, remove the stalk in the center and cut to smaller pieces.
Do the same of the rest of the ingredients so all of them are at the same size. It would be better to use green chilli but I didn’t have any, so I went for red chili padi :/
Cut coriander leaves into chunks, and Thai basil leaves as well. If you have access to Holy Basil, use it. It’s not common to get Holy basil here but I got some of the seeds so I’ll be planting them 😉 On the right, lightly toast coriander seeds, cumin and whole black pepper seeds in a dry pan. Then pour into a mortar, grind till fine with a pestle.
then put all into the blender and blitz away with some water. I added a tad tooo much water so my paste was rather watery. But it smelled almost the same as the one we made in Ya’s Cooking School. After you’ve made this, you’re halfway thru to completing the Thai Green Curry dish.
Now let’s get to making the curry dish.
So like I mentioned before, once you have made the paste, making the curry is easy breezy. All you need to do is to add the paste into the coconut milk, add in the chicken and some vegetables and kaffir leaves, fish sauce, palm sugar and boil for 15 minutes or until chicken has cooked and et voila dinner is ready!
I added some ladies finger / okra into the dish and added in water and a pork stock cube because i didn’t have enough of coconut milk. Plus, a whole pot of coconut milk just freaks me out!
If you haven’t realized, there’s no oil in the recipe for green curry paste and the curry at all!
- 1 thumb size galangal
- 1 stalk lemongrass (white part)
- 3-4 kaffir lime leaves
- 2 stalks fresh coriander
- 1 stalk thai basil, leaves only
- 1 red onion
- 4-5 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp shrimp paste
- 10 small green chillies
- 1 tbsp mixture of ground peppercorn, cumin and coriander seeds
- 2-3 tbsp green curry paste (recipe above)
- 300g chicken, cut to small pieces
- 2 small round eggplant, cut to quarters
- 2.5 cups coconut milk
- 2 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
- 2 stems thai basil / holy basil, only leaves
- 2-3 red chillies, sliced
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp palm sugar
- pinch of salt to taste
- Finely chop all the aromatics and ingredients, except for the spices.
- Lightly toast black peppercorn, coriander seeds and cumin in a dry pan. Use a mortar and pestle to grind it to fine powder.
- Put in all the ingredients into a blender and add in 2 tbsp of water first.
- Start the blender, if it doesn't blitz well, add a little water at a time. It should be pasty.
- Pour half the coconut milk in a pot and bring to boil. Add in the green curry paste and cook till fragrant. Reduce heat.
- Add chicken, coconut milk, palm sugar, fish sauce, chilies, and cook for 10 minutes.
- Add in eggplant and kaffir lime leaves and cook for another 5 minutes or until eggplant is soft.
- Add in the thai basil leaves, salt if needed.
- Serve with rice.